


White Noise

by DeadpanSnarker



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Internal Monologue, M/M, Red String of Fate, Romance, lol fckn underappreciated ship, neighbours gone wrong, tw: alot of tears on your part, youre all weak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-08-16 08:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 74,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8095531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadpanSnarker/pseuds/DeadpanSnarker
Summary: People often fall in love with their hearts, some with their minds; Yoo Kihyun falls in love with his ears. A doctor's mission in life is to save as many people as they can. Changkyun was an inadequate doctor trying his best, and Kihyun was a lost soul that still refused to be saved regardless of the presence of a warm hand beseeching to extricate him. Familiar was the enemy—short of breath, short on time...





	1. White

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

>  
> 
> I hate writers.
> 
> As a child, whenever I was handed a book, I had to ask the one who had given it to me: “Does the hero or heroine die in the end?” The question was usually greeted with a chuckle or an intrigued raised eyebrow, wondering why I would spoil the most important detail in the story for myself. And I would only reply that a story in which a major character died was boring.
> 
> But that was a lie.
> 
> The truth is I was afraid. An author is like any other artist, he creates a world he wished was his in his work of art. And death isn’t the epitome of art. He tries to set the perfect conditions for the climax scene, crafting paths, planting coincidences, giving birth to life-changing people –all for what? All to give his breed of feelings his happiness. You start admiring that person, really wishing them true happiness, but when they die? It’s like feeling your faith diminish. And no one likes it when they die.
> 
> And I was no one.
> 
> A story was usually written to give you hope, teaching you to believe in yourself, that everything is possible, giving you an escape-route when things get hard. And as far as I'm concerned, no one escaped life to find death really found salvation. However, a story that ends with death … is nothing but morbid and depressing.
> 
> And my story is morbid.

 

 

 

 

**One,**

**L'Appel du Vide.**

 

 

 

It was questionable that as children hardly anyone didn’t imagine what it would be like to have wings and fly. Part of the growing up process was giving up such naïve ideals. Candidly put, that might have been the hardest part of growing up.

It wasn’t infrequent, floating in this half-delirium state. He, unlike most, felt weightless under the pressure. That might have been the only reason that till this moment he hadn’t broke. And to give everything its due credit, it wasn’t something he was doing –something to be credited for. In fact he had been cheating for some time now.

But every now and then, he had to pay the price…

It would do nothing to Kihyun’s wonder if the ultimate price didn’t cost enough. Nonetheless, he was in no shoes to analyze that any time soon, regarding he was doing nothing to fix it; unless handing energy-drinks to that thing digging his grave was count as doing something.

 

How frequently did he wish he could stay in this induced state forever, that way he wouldn’t mess up his life more than he did.

As tempting as the thought was, Kihyun had to soon give it up in spite of the possible presence of something sweeter in reality.

Among all the voices his ears often heard, the one he could distinguish at moment was a new level, a category of its own. The fact he could thoroughly discern it was enough of a reason to make him drawl with a slow –and a painful- smile.

“Is that what an angel sounds like?” was the thing he half coughed, half whispered before opening his eyes.

Kihyun wasn’t surprised to find he was lying in a hospital bed; what surprised him was the room being empty.

His head felt neither wobbly nor heavy, two of the common symptoms he often entertained after days like the one before.

He would have thought hearing the voice that made him give up his slumber wouldn’t be a work of imagination. His imagination, to be brutally accurate.

He let his eyes wander feebly around, taking in his surroundings despite not caring much about the content. Nothing to fret over, just the usual. Naturally, he was plugged to an IV, in that sickly pale green hospital gown, almost begging you not to feel better. The fading curtain, the clicking-too-loud-for-comfort wall clock, the vase with the fresh flowers, the steel plate with medicine on it, the lonely bed, the empty visitor chair. The antiseptics and anesthesia, like always, didn’t mix up well; however, they weren’t as pungent. Or maybe it was Kihyun who was clogged. It always made him laugh, how could anyone hope to get better with everything around here in consideration!?

He scoffed a laugh, one he could barely recognize in spite of how shaky and low it came out. He probably should focus less on the antiseptics and more on the forever-empty chair. That way, the room didn’t speak of deathly sickness, but rather deathly loneliness. A constant reminder.

He didn’t concern himself a second longer. As slowly as he had opened his eyes, he was now closing them, slowly retracing back to what lead to this. He thought back to the clothes he had just seen and tried to figure out what he had done in them.

Yesterday, Kihyun had quit his job. After working a week as a barista, he had successfully splashed a customer’s shirt in spite of his persistent rudeness –although the better term would have been ‘fired’. However, he didn’t pay much attention to that detail as he left, fuming, after his shift had ended and before the manager had graced the coffee shop with his presence. A random stranger crept Kihyun out when he smiled at him on the street. He went to an acquaintance’s and later that night he left, fairly drunk. He might have puked somewhere in an abandoned alley and eternally felt more light-headed. He keyed a car parking in front of the compound where he live -for reasons his memory might be bound to come across later on- and he vaguely recalled nearly fainting as he tried to unlock the door to his room.

He couldn’t go further than that,

“Ya, are you awake?” Despite the rude choice of words, the tone wasn’t as nearly as crude.

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes again, wondering what on earth a living being might be addressing him in a hospital for.

It was a guy in a pair of faded jeans and a contrastingly cobalt blue shirt. Sleek raven-black hair, typical rolled-up sleeves, fashion glasses and a pair of polished shoes that didn’t much match the casual attire. He looked young yet dull. And Kihyun said nothing in acknowledgement, only hoped the intruder would go away when he didn’t.

Kihyun didn’t remember much of what happened, but that was first and last thing he heard the dimpled-man say. The next time he had opened his eyes, it was ten hours later than he had recalled. Groggily and no less painfully, he peeked into the hallway through the glass. Accustomed to this routine, he figured it was the stealthy hours of the night and the empty silent hallway indicated such.

He sat up in his bed, touching his head as he felt it might fall hadn’t he done so. He shut his eyes and furrowed his eyebrows in spite of the pain. He rubbed his temples a few times till the pain had relatively subsided and the nausea in his stomach had settled down; Kihyun was trying to think if he was capable of standing up.

Surprisingly, he could stand up and get into his clothes.

Having unplugged the IV, checked the hallway, the rest wasn’t rocket science.

And no sooner had his lungs inhaled the cold wind of an autumn night.

All he had to do now was walk home.

 

The streets were engulfed by despondent silence. This kind of deadly silence made Kihyun contemplate his life. It was three in the morning, he was walking by himself in the lonely streets heading home, once again, having a clear conscience about sneaking out of a hospital and all the aftermaths of the brash action such as the medical file and medical bill.

He was so lost in thought that by the time he had reached the block where he lived, he was completely out of it.

The details might have not registered but Kihyun could clearly register the pain the impact with the stone wall made him experience. He could feel the air breeze quicken next to his face where a hand slammed.

Kihyun was paralyzed. The sudden gesture at such an unexpected time took him off-guard and he was motionless with downright shock and fear.

Before Kihyun could take in the face of his assaulter in the night, the latter had leaned in right next to his ear.

“I’d really appreciate it if you kept your keys in your pocket.” Came out a stealthy whisper.

Neither of them moved for a while; or perhaps the adrenaline mixed with whatever drugs Kihyun had been taking made everything go in slow motion.

The guy backed away, walking away till it seemed as though he had, by all aspects of the word, been submerged in the darkness –enough for his silhouette to be swallowed.

Kihyun only then remembered to breathe.

He thought Karma bitch took some time till it slapped him in the face. If this wasn’t about the car-keying incident that had occurred the day before, then he had absolutely no idea what this overreaction was for.

His lips weren’t twitching regardless of the cold or the fear; apparently, he was on the verge of a smile. Whoever it was who assaulted Kihyun, had a very unforgettable timbre.

Someone bumped into him as he ascended the stairs, a friendly reminder of why he preferred the fire-escape. He looked up, ready to fight as the last few days had been increasingly annoying and everyone just seemed to be in the mood for a fight. Ironically, Kihyun would be more than willing to accommodate to their needs.

The rushing-guy muttered a hasty sorry, briefly looking up at the person he had just hit, not out of concern, but rather silent accusation. His eyes narrowed for a second and Kihyun instantly knew why.

“You,” he said. He was the same guy in the cobalt blue shirt and faded jeans. He looked pissed off; he cursed then proceeded his storming down the stairs.

Not that Kihyun was well informed of the residents of this block but he was quite sure that person didn’t belong here. He couldn’t possibly fit into that background.

 

 

If you were too absorbed in your work, whatever your definition of work was, and you accidentally caught someone staring at you, no matter how hard you tried to ignore it, it would keep lingering in the back of your mind, nagging you and disturbing your work.

Kihyun pretended not to notice the weird stranger order his third cup of coffee while more-than-occasionally staring at him. He intentionally didn’t make eye-contact. The way the guy creeping him out was so persistent indicated Kihyun either did him wrong at some point, or he simply knew Kihyun. Both were equally problematic.

Kihyun reached for the music-player and replayed the music piece. He closed his eyes, thinking deeply as he tried not to tap his pencil against his sheet; he couldn’t focus nonetheless. At last, he decided to abandon the café in hope he would find the clarity needed somewhere else without those random stares.

The guy was already paying his bill; Kihyun rolled his eyes.

The guy was leaving, lagging at the door until Kihyun had, stupidly enough, reached the door.

“Do I know you?” Kihyun hoped he hadn’t snapped.

He was still holding the door; Kihyun was becoming by the second more grateful to the fact there weren’t any customers there save for a teenager.

Judging from the amused smile that played at the stranger’s lips, Kihyun had either snapped or he really knew him. Kihyun tried to match his face, linking a name, a voice, a colour to him; but it didn’t compute.

“Do you?” he countered.

Kihyun blinked at him. He was entitled to remember those eyes; one didn’t often find many guys with strikingly deep eyes around here. Kihyun resisted the urge to roll his eyes and pushed past him.

The stranger ruined the moment of inspiration. Or in Kihyun’s case, the absence of the moment.

 

 

More often than not, Kihyun found himself thinking he was old enough to learn the true meaning to time, to start working on not wasting it and making the most of it while he still could. But he also could be crowned as the king of procrastination. He took his sweet time before doing anything, as though he would end up not doing it, as though it weren’t inevitable. Even if he were the one making the shots, he would still lag behind in every action.

A model example reflected in him tying his shoelaces just before his door.

Maybe it was one of those rare times when procrastination paid off well.

A voice laughed. A sweet, feathery laugh.

“Ok, I’ll call you later, there’s something I gotta do.” A pause, another short laugh. “Take care.”

Kihyun jolted up and instantly opened the door. Not knowing how he looked, he faced the voice’s owner; the latter was wearing a not-quite-so-surprised smile as his feet loitered on the step while halfway turning to face Kihyun.

It might have not been the best thing to say but Kihyun was reputed for that kind of things. “Did you follow me?”

He laughed and turned around fully, taking a few steps back until he was standing before Kihyun’s threshold, looming and harmless.

“Isn’t that a bit extreme of you?” he asked. Kihyun couldn’t find anything remotely funny yet the guy’s smile kept only broadening. Kihyun grimaced, about to say something when he followed up, “Okay, but maybe you should remember the customers whose shirts you ruined.” It wasn’t menacing.

Kihyun narrowed his eyes; just how small this world was. The guy in front of him was the same guy who had the misfortune of getting coffee on his shirt a few days ago. Kihyun hadn’t intended to; the guy just happened to step in just in time Kihyun was ‘handing’ some ‘friendly’ customer his coffee. Regardless of the misunderstanding, Kihyun hadn’t apologized back then –still didn’t. He only blankly stared at him, irritated for some reason.

He titled his head, it almost looked flirtatious; then his hand took Kihyun’s, reaching out for the keys in the latter’s hands. Kihyun couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong with him, but once again his reflexes were slow –nonexistent to say the least. He hardly even felt the contact.

“So those were the lucky keys,” the guy with the forget-me-not voice examined a certain key too intently, not that Kihyun’s keychain had but three of the metal things. And it finally hit him why he couldn’t react ten seconds ago.

His rage was all over his face before he could articulate any words. Wasn’t it a bit extreme to manhandle other people?

He pressed an apologetic smile that his bear-like eyes accentuated. Slowly, his deep voice articulated a reply to Kihyun’s silent protest. “About that, I’m sorry. You caught me at a bad moment.”

With a small effort, Kihyun succeeded at not rolling his eyes; only because he was too focused on the guy’s voice. Hostile, apologetic, playful –in all tones, his voice blew Kihyun away and he couldn’t even explain it.

“Hi, I’m Lim Changkyun,” he gestured upwards with his eyes then he extended his hand, “I just moved in last week. Please take good care of me.”

Truly, this world was one small place.

Too small it didn’t fit Yoo Kihyun.

“Are you mute or something?” it sounded like a tease from Changkyun’s lips but Kihyun could swear he saw caution in his eyes, as though it could be true and the statement would insult him.

Kihyun took his hand, attempting at a smile which he knew turned out to be a failure. “Yoo Kihyun. I’m sorry but I've to be somewhere.”

Avoiding his eyes as much as they didn’t let Kihyun, the latter pulled back his hand and descended the stairs.

 

 

 

 

During the past two years of his life, Kihyun found himself waking up to a different ceiling most days of the week. It would take a few seconds to remember where he was, easily guessed by whether or not someone lied by his side, or by his clothes –sometimes the lack of them.

But this time, he couldn’t connect the dots.

Through the window, he could see it was already night yet his nose could clearly detect the refreshing aroma of coffee.

Nonetheless, he couldn’t tell whether or not finding someone by his side made him relieved or anxious.

The room looked like nothing Kihyun would get mixed up with. It was neat and organized, with a simple artistic touch about the few ornaments that hung on the wall –a lamp on the nightstand with a book, no clock hanging on the wall and no mirrors either, a bookshelf with books he questioned anyone could read in spite of their size, and a few boxes piled over each other at the furthest corner from the door. It was the same size as Kihyun’s bedroom and it had a pleasant smell.

Something felt familiar about the room. Kihyun wasn’t a believer, but he hoped to god at that moment that this familiarity remained just a mere presentiment.

A shadow seemed to be approaching the room.

Lim Changkyun.

Kihyun immediately bolted up in bed, defensively springing up like a cat. Changkyun stood leaning on the doorframe, arms hanging loosely at his sides while his eyes imperceptibly narrowed for a second there.

“Why am I here?” Kihyun’s voice was rough, cracky.

“You don’t remember?” Changkyun inquired as though Kihyun just insinuated that he didn’t recognize him.

With a weary heart, Kihyun closed his eyes and prepared for the worst; however, he did not dare to voice it.

On hearing Changkyun’s sigh, Kihyun’s ears registered the rapid-fire words, “Yesterday, you were drunk enough to confuse the storey you lived on and you ended up trying to come into my room mistaking it for yours. You were in such a bad shape you probably didn’t process what I was saying about you getting the wrong room…” Changkyun trailed off; for some reason Kihyun had to open his eyes. Changkyun was scratching his neck while looking sideways; a gesture Kihyun had to stifle the impulse of thinking how endearing it had looked. “So I just let you stay the night. Nothing happened.”

Normally, a guy wouldn’t add the last remark. Changkyun even emphasized it by an ‘honest to god’, probably on seeing Kihyun’s slightly-amused, mostly-hostile expression. His expression that often betrayed him, revealing things he wished were kept inside.

“Okay.” Kihyun simply said. He saw no reason why Changkyun should lie.

Changkyun was looking steadily into his eyes as the former digested his response. Kihyun had to look away on cue of Changkyun’s playful smile; he didn’t know this guy but Changkyun seemed like those guys who found something amusing in every situation. And so, Kihyun got out of bed.

“Okay?” Changkyun’s tone sounded incredulous to Kihyun’s ears as his eyes continued on their search for anything that might belong to him. “That’s all you’re going to say?”

Kihyun didn’t know what Lim Changkyun wanted. Did he perhaps expect a heart-warming reunion and a grateful hug? An outburst and confused accusations? Because Kihyun certainly veered between both notions enough to consider applying either.

“I’m sorry?” Kihyun tried a different approach; regardless, he would have preferred silence to what he had said. Not to say, seeing Changkyun drove him off edge; he hadn’t yet made peace with the fact he had assaulted him days ago.

Changkyun’s hand reached to his face and he sighed resignedly.

“Thank you, but I’ve to go now.” Kihyun added as he was standing right in front of Changkyun. He smiled because maybe then Changkyun would let him be.

“Yes, yes, you’ve somewhere to be.”

Normally, Kihyun would have assumed this was meant to be sarcastic. But something about Changkyun’s voice forced him to reconsider for he sounded –for a reason unknown to Kihyun- like a man coming undone.

“Are you sure you don’t know me?” Kihyun ventured after a few seconds of lip-biting.

“You’re not someone I think I can forget.” Changkyun answered.

_Great. Then what was with that off-tune attitude?_

Changkyun made way for Kihyun while gesturing onwards, an offer which Kihyun didn’t pass up on. As he headed for the door, almost on instinct, Kihyun realized why this seemed familiar. It had the same architectural-design as his room. And he sure didn’t like what this entailed. Again, as Kihyun got lost in thought, he forgot to check his surroundings –something brushed against his feet he almost jumped.

It was a cat.

Of course it would be a cat. It seemed to take a liking to his leg. It had beautiful white fur –white fur that evoked so many feelings inside of Kihyun. He could hear a soft chuckle from behind. On bending down and stroking it, Kihyun realized it was the first genuine smile he had smiled in weeks.

He could see Changkyun bending down as well. In his attempt to stroke his purring cat, his hand touched Kihyun’s.

Kihyun almost jolted, hoping Changkyun hadn’t seen that reaction, but when Changkyun’s eyes met his, the latter could see something else mingled with skepticism, almost akin to pity. Almost.

Quicker than he could react, Changkyun’s finger pushed a strand of hair that had just fallen out of Kihyun’s bed-hair, a hand contrastingly warm and enveloping. He instantly slapped it away, a beat too quickly in fact. While Kihyun kept avoiding eye-contact, he stole a quick glance at Changkyun's face; it looked as though he had expected Kihyun to react exactly the way he did.

“Would you please refrain from touching me?” It was more of a warning, less of a request with a tinge of a threat despite the uneven tone. But unmistakably a snap.

It might have been an overreaction but Changkyun had the decency to apologize. Kihyun was stroking the cat one more time before leaving for good; it felt good for the two of them. She – he could tell it was a she- relishing in pleasure, and he, ravishing with the blood felt as it coursed through his veins.

“Did you have a cat?” Changkyun inquired as he bent down again to lift up his cat.

Startled at the question, Kihyun countered with another. “What made you assume so?”

Changkyun's grin grew wider. It was a bit hard not to look at it and forget everything that had gone wrong with his world. For example, his half-justifiable anger at Changkyun. “Well, I don’t really know you, so I could only make assumptions.”

Kihyun bit down a smile and started walking to the door, face down. He couldn’t find his shoes, but who cared, it was the same compound block. He knew if he had turned back or said anything more, he wouldn’t be so keen on leaving. And he had to leave.

So he did.

Apparently, Changkyun had the apartment right above his; indeed Kihyun didn’t like this. Once Kihyun opened the door to his room, he came across his reflection and instead of simply diluted eyes, they looked bloodshot for some reason. Despite just waking up, he felt tired so he decided to sleep.

 

 

 

He crumpled the paper and threw it against the wall. Pushing back his headphones and trying as gently as his anger allowed to lay down his head on the dash. It was hopeless.

Yoo Kihyun was hopeless.

Ever since waking up and he had been trying to adequately compose a song, but Kihyun, unsurprisingly, kept miserably failing. It was bad as it was that he had been in the studio for hours now.

He walked till he had reached the piano, stroking some random keys and waiting for them to ease off his mind.

On taking a deep breath and sitting at the piano, he let his hands lead as he closed his eyes. Kihyun played the one piece he had mastered by heart, for so long he kept playing it and he lost himself among the tunes that filled the room. When he touched the piano, it felt like there was someone out there willing to listen, like there was something in the unswerving night understanding the depth of each key-stroke, shouldering the burden for a while then handing it back once he was done playing.

“As splendid as ever.” Kihyun heard an impressed whistle.

He opened his eyes, and there was his bag of burdens being handed back to him. “Why are you here?” he said not-unfriendly-enough and not really caring about the answer. It was Minhyuk. Probably the only person who talked to Kihyun.

“I let myself in, as usual. I didn’t want to interrupt your little concert tho.” He smirked and it enhanced his cat-like look. “Are you ok? You look tired.”

“I feel tired.” Kihyun found himself uncharacteristically muttering. He sighed and laid his head on the keys, closing his eyes at the short sound made when his cheek touched them.

Minhyuk’s face took on a concerned shade. “I’d tell you to stop but you’ve made a point of not listening to me.”

“No offense, Hyuk, but I can take care of myself.”

Minhyuk smirked but didn’t reply. He then took out a cigarette and started puffing at it.

“I can't write it.” Kihyun knew his companion would immediately understand.

“What’s the update on that information?” Minhyuk laughed humourlessly. “Maybe if you had actually interacted with people, you’d have enough inspiration to finish your piece.”

Mentally, Kihyun shrugged, physically, he felt too drained to even do that simple task. And he felt tears welling up in his eyes again; it felt like the more tired he was, the less control he had over his tears. Nutshell, Yoo Kihyun wished he had always been energized all his life –it could have used some control.

He could see Minhyuk rolling his eyes and turning his back on him … just how many times had he witnessed this?

He shut down his eyes and pressed his lips, replaying the mantra in his head: _go away, I don’t need this_.

His entreaty lasted as long as it took not to let out a sob, which to say, was long enough for Minhyuk to leave. And so, Kihyun was alone.

When he got his act together, he started playing again but his heart wasn’t into it anymore. He had stayed in the studio for a few hours more, playing and crumpling ink-stained papers. If the wall could speak, it would curse at him.  


 

Kihyun liked listening to the night. It had a very distinguishable sound that depicted what words failed to express. The emotions triggered by what the eye perceived and the heart failed to conceive. Sometimes, it sounded like the loneliest thing this side of the planet; other times, it felt like having listened to the sounds of lovers, the hums of lonely souls and the deep talks of friends, it became too whole for words.

That might be the only reason he didn’t plug his earphones as he wandered at night.

He should be living the prime of his life. They said the view to what lied behind the summit was quite picturesque; however, Kihyun thought the furthest he could climb was actually at the feet of this massive body before his eyes, figuratively speaking.

He deliberately took the fire-escape. Maybe leaving his window open wasn’t that good of an idea. As soon as he had settled into his couch, he heard a meow. Kihyun certainly didn’t know what was wrong with him, but smiling at the thought of a cat for company was certainly one of the things wrong with him. He threw his jacket, not caring where it landed then he moved closer to the couch once more.

“Hey little thing,” he said as he took her into his arms; she was already getting cozy as she adapted to Kihyun’s chest, “did your owner smile so much at you that you felt you needed an escape?” he grinned a fool’s grin at his lame joke, not much at the joke as it was at the silly thought of having joked at the expense of a random neighbour. She meowed and started falling asleep just as he sank into the couch. It was believed stroking cats was calming enough to even out your heartbeat and you started falling asleep.

A small part of Kihyun knew this was wrong and he should be knocking on his neighbour’s door giving him his pet back. But the idea didn’t seem too appealing; Kihyun didn’t like him. And most importantly, something about Lim Changkyun made Kihyun feel like escaping his gaze, but the worst part was that thing about his voice…

He settled on keeping her a bit could do very little to no harm. Changkyun should have been more careful with her; so if he missed her, he should remember he didn’t care enough to make sure she didn’t wander around.

As far as Kihyun was concerned, the only thing he could miss if anyone burgled his room was the only thing valuable present: the stereo. Single-handedly, he reached for the remote and let some soft music fill the room as he gave in to sleep.  


When he woke up, C wasn’t on his lap. Kihyun decided to call her C in tribute to her owner. He smiled bitterly at how even pets ended up leaving him. It didn’t take long before the white fur emerged from the bathroom –or barged out, more accurately, as it chased –maybe toyed with a small cylindrical glass-bottle.

His panic wasn’t as much for C as it was for the content of the bottle. Albeit he was still in a half-conscious state, he ran to C, a second too late to rescuing the fluid that had just flown out of the bottle and into the rug-less floor.

Kihyun groaned.

He almost laughed at how desperate he was to think C’s paws were very much lucky.

Maybe this was his cue to return things to their owners. Who was he kidding anyways? He was never apt to take care of anything that breathed.

 

It only occurred to him that he hadn’t taken a look at himself when Changkyun opened the door and his sleepy eyes started smiling at what they were perceiving.

“Here,” Kihyun said before Changkyun could speak, holding the cat in front of his face the way one absolutely shouldn’t hold a living thing. “Don’t lose her again.”

Changkyun didn’t take her for some time. She started wriggling and she scratched Changkyun’s reaching-out-hand then fell to the floor, hiding behind Kihyun’s left leg. It felt endearing as much as it was funny. Changkyun, on the other hand, wasn’t so much as amused.

“She had obviously taken a liking to you,” Changkyun said as he scratched his neck. If Kihyun thought Changkyun’s voice was deadly that night he had whispered into his ear, he would rectify that right now. “I’m so lousy of an owner.”

As much as his admission bemused Kihyun, as much as he was intrigued to ask, “What’s her name?”

And he could swear Changkyun’s eyes lit up at the question. “She doesn’t have one. I’ve had her for two days and she doesn’t have a name yet. That’s how much of a lousy owner I am.” It might have been a joke, it might have been real shame weighing his eyes; Kihyun couldn’t tell. “What did you call her?”

Taken aback, came out one of Kihyun's counter-questions. “Why are you always assuming things?” he could probably ask himself why he was partly lying about things with that type of questions.

“Why is it so hard to hold a conversation with you?” Changkyun’s pitch rose a bit, not in a lowering tone; it sounded more of a teasing, the way you would argue with a child. “Just answer me one straightforward answer for God’s sakes.” He didn’t wait for Kihyun’s reply; he bent down and tenderly took his cat, having a small dialogue and a few pouts till she had finally settled there.

“C.” Kihyun admitted.

Changkyun's laugh this time made Kihyun consider more than reconsidering his deadly voice; it made Kihyun reconsider his entire life.

“C. That’s such a fitting name.” Changkyun titled his head, “Would you like to come in or you have somewhere to be?” he cocked a challenging eyebrow.

Part of Kihyun wanted to scream yes, the other part, the dominant part knew he would regret walking away at the moment less than he would if he took Changkyun up on his offer.

“Maybe some other time.” Kihyun said, pressing a smile.

The second he let his eyes meet Changkyun's, he thought he should take back his refusal. Changkyun was plain dejected. However, Kihyun did nothing but turn away and retreat to his room.

“Hey, Kihyun,” Changkyun called, Kihyun's ears dancing to the sound of his name, “Can you at least promise me to accept my invitation next time we meet?”

Kihyun smiled joylessly to himself before turning around, “What makes you so sure you’d still want my company next time you see me?”

For a second, Changkyun's eyes clouded, the same way one’s eyes would when they perceived something they knew existed yet refused to acknowledge.

“Do you ever answer any questions?” yet, Changkyun didn’t let that momentary cloud dim the horizon; he was back to his smile.

“Do you ever do anything but ask questions?” Kihyun asked back, crossing his arms and maybe deadpanning a bit. Rallying so much with Minhyuk made him upgrade his skills.

Changkyun shook his head, not resignedly though. It was funny how the pot was calling the kettle black.

“Look, thanks for the other night, not that I asked for your help-” Kihyun was focusing solely on Changkyun's eyes as he spoke. He never paused and he never thought twice; he just let it be the same way he did with the piano. “And you should know that I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, but I don’t really like you.”

Kihyun hadn’t been harnessing his social skills much lately, but he didn’t recall being so rude. Somehow he didn’t care, because somehow, he was really cross with everything.

It seemed like Changkyun hadn’t heard him and throughout Kihyun's whole speech, Changkyun's face was impassive. “So you promise?”

Resignedly, Kihyun threw his arms up in the air. “Excuse me but are you deaf?” he was cross indeed.

Changkyun smiled again, biting his lips as though a laugh were threatening to come out and become followed by so many that stopping wouldn’t be an option. “I just realized that this was longest sentence you’ve ever spoken to me.”

Kihyun blinked at him thrice before scowling.

“Just promise me, okay?”

He shrugged and started to turn around. “Whatever.”

In the end, what would another promise matter in the world that held so many broken promises?


	2. Midnight Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> t/w

 

 

Getting himself into situations one wouldn’t find in the least envious of was a special skill Kihyun had been born with, his parents’ farewell gift one could say.

He was just leaving the café when he had accidentally bumped into someone two blocks away. As usual, Kihyun had apologized, but the man was probably having a bad day and was aching for a fight.

Kihyun couldn’t blame him; it was rush hour and he was a salary man who probably wished to set his employer on fire.

“You should pay more attention to where you’re going.” The man said, tone barely lighter than a shout.

“I apologized, if it’s of any use, I’m-” Kihyun was about to apologize again when the man grabbed him by his shirt. He hadn’t been a big fan of his day so far; not a few minutes ago, Kihyun had seen one of the many people he would rather spend his life particularly avoiding.

“Your insolent attitude is really starting to tick me off.” The man roared.

_Great._

Kihyun couldn’t fight him but neither could he come up with anything to say that would put out the man’s rage. In fact, Kihyun was seeing something that fueled his.

“Where have you been, Kwihyoni?” a voice interjected. At that particular moment Kihyun was willing to get beaten up. Changkyun, also known as the reason he abandoned the café minutes ago, was addressing him and slowly turning to the man who was still adding a few more creases to Kihyun’s shirt.

Changkyun flashed him an apologetic smile while scratching his neck and bowing down. “I'm apologizing on the behalf of my little brother here,” he remained in the perfect ninety-degree bow for five seconds at least and Kihyun could feel the man’s hands loosen –not that he was too focused on that. When Changkyun straightened up, still smiling, he had added, “He had been living abroad all his life and he’s just returned, he often forgets his manners.” He laughed awkwardly and just like that, Kihyun was free.

While he was about to bow again, and while Kihyun was sealing off a comeback, he found Changkyun's hand on the back of his head, gently forcing him into a bow. “Bow.” He whispered and louder he said, “We apologize for this little inconvenience. I hope you have a nice day, sir.”

Changkyun didn’t let go of his head till the man muttered what should have been a gracious acceptance of a sincere apology and walked away.

“Are you okay?” was the first thing Changkyun asked as he stood before Kihyun's eyes.

For all Kihyun knew, he should be thanking Changkyun; but then again he was only in that situation because- no, forget that, Kihyun felt the injustice. He wasn’t just about to blame Changkyun for something the latter didn’t cause.

So Kihyun nodded.

Changkyun's eyes lingered on Kihyun’s hair, then on his lips; Kihyun feeling unnerved under the gaze of those keen eyes, as though he were naked under their pressure. “For someone who is so passionate about music, you don’t use your voice often.”

To stay silent or to lash at him, that was the question.

At last, Kihyun forced a smile and hoped to god Changkyun wouldn’t follow or call out to him as the former started walking.

“Yoo Kihyun,” he called and Kihyun froze in his stance, “would you care for a second lunch?”

“Thanks, but I'm not really hungry.” Kihyun said as he turned around and faced Changkyun once more. There was something about his eyes. It was probably the same thing that made him guarded and threw off his guard at the same time about Changkyun's voice.

“But you promised.”

He scoffed and for the first time Changkyun's smile faded. But should Kihyun own up to the responsibility of wiping off Changkyun's bright smile?

“Come on, food can never hurt. If you accept it today, I’ll back off and won't bother you again if it irritates you so much.” It was now a half-smile, only because it was both; hopeful and fearful.

_Lim Changkyun, just what is it that you want?_

As Kihyun considered this little offer, he thought about faith. What was faith? How did it visit you and more importantly how did you keep it entertained enough not to abandon you? Kihyun’s day might not have set off on the best possible way, but come to think of it, neither had his life.

“I’m paying for my meal.” He said as he passed Changkyun by, not sure where he was heading but hoping his companion would take notice and hence take the lead.

He could hear Changkyun laugh; in a way it was as equally soothing as the music he himself usually played.

 

He threw his bag next to him to make sure Changkyun wouldn’t take the seat by his side, forcing him to sit across the table in that small diner.

“I'm sorry about that night,” Changkyun began and upon Kihyun’s very interruption he cursed his stupidity for disturbing Changkyun's attempt at an apology –also Changkyun's attempt at a conversation- with his stupid declaration that he had already apologized for that. And there was Changkyun apologizing twice yet Kihyun was blaming him for his very own anger. And he preached maturity.

“Sorry.” Kihyun said under his breath and looked away, really wishing he could take the last minute of his life back.

The waitress came and Kihyun ordered first, pretending he didn’t feel the eyes boring into his face.

“Can we start over again?” Changkyun offered as soon as the waitress had left. “Hi, I'm Lim Changkyun. I'm your new neighbour, please take good care of me.”

Setting aside his anger, Kihyun smiled, at which his companion’s smile was rekindled again. “Yoo Kihyun. I'm sorry I've been such a jerk.”

“Apology accepted, you’ve been through a lot. Next time please refrain from angering middle-aged men who despise their lives.” He chuckled, low, serene, and peace-evoking.

“I didn’t do anything, he was the one looking for a fight,” Kihyun remarked, mainly to himself.

“He just probably hated you hair.” It came out teasing and Changkyun's very smirk proved it. “Thought you were a high-school punk or something with that rainbow-coloured hair of yours.”

For a second Kihyun knew he was this close to asking Changkyun if he disliked his hair. In a way it had been a way to express how he felt about how things stood, things he couldn’t change; a not-so-silent, not-quite-vibrant protest. “Well, I kinda really like it.”

Changkyun covered his eyes with one hand and spoke a beat later. “I do, too.” Slow, deep, and deliberate, “I can only associate so many colours with you.”

At that, Kihyun didn’t have to force his smile. “So what do you do?”

Changkyun hesitated for a second, biting his lower lip, a gesture Kihyun found very eye-catching.

“I’m a doctor,” Changkyun's phone started ringing. He held up his finger, and when he looked at the caller-ID he had added, “hold that thought for me, yea?” and Kihyun could swear this guy spent most of his life smiling at the mirror and practicing so as to perfect his smile, to the extent of having fully harnessed his talent as to skillfully use it to charm people and coax them into liking him.

And, he would be damned, it _was_ soothing.

Neither the food nor Changkyun came while he waited. Kihyun felt like all his life, he had been waiting for something; waiting to grow up, waiting for a friend, waiting to perfect a talent, waiting to feel better. Like he had been waiting for a lot of things yet time refused to wait for him. If anything it proved to be a scoundrel and conspired to make most things harder for him; the same way it had paid special attention to stepping up its game with Kihyun's life not too long ago.

His food came, and not ten seconds later, so did his companion.

“What are you thinking of?”

He was brooding out of the window and into the dusky sky. Without turning his head to Changkyun, he replied, “You're boring.”

A few years ago, Kihyun would have bothered at least sugar-coating his words. But since he so far liked nothing about Changkyun save for his voice, sugar-coating anything wasn’t high on his list.

“Can't blame you,” Changkyun murmured as he slumped into his seat; this caught Kihyun's attention. “Listen, I’m not usually this awkward but, God,” he emphasized the word as though his face didn’t do the sentence justice, “you're making it really hard for me. It’s like you have those invisible walls around you and the more I try to say the higher you make them go up, and it feels like I could never get to you. It feels like each step in your direction is a mistake and I’ll be forever locked out.”

By the time Changkyun had finished, he was breathless, and Kihyun was thunder-struck. He had forgotten how it felt to be honest about something that was favourable to the person listening to you; he forgot how it felt to have someone being nice around him. Changkyun was a stranger, yet he so easily let himself be seen through as he spoke his mind so openly.

“I might not know you… yet, but I’d not so much want anything more than that right now and I'm trying, okay? Just tell me there’s hope.” Changkyun reached out his hand on the table, pulled it a fraction of a second away from touching Kihyun’s, playing it off. Kihyun felt bad for snapping at him the other day.

As the beats of silence intensified by the words hanging in the air, Kihyun looked deeply into Changkyun's eyes; he wanted to be sucked in. The more Changkyun spoke, the more he wanted to close his eyes and hope he could dissipate into the air Changkyun was breathing, the air touching his vocal chords and making them shake to produce those smooth, deep melodies –a sweet requiem lulling his melancholies.

Kihyun wanted to close his eyes. Yoo Kihyun needed to open up his heart.

“You and I, can you form three sentences starting with those two pronouns?” Kihyun asked just after he had closed his eyes and threw back his head. There was hope.

Changkyun didn’t speak.

Kihyun could feel the weight of the silence pressuring his aching heart.

Throughout his years of existence, he had so many things he would take back without a second of hesitation; so many words that led to circumstances he begged not to end up in. Most of those words were because Kihyun usually didn’t think twice about what he said. Later on, this proved to him that he often found what he wanted most when he didn’t think twice about it.

And that question was exactly one of those questions.

“Look at me,” Changkyun said; it came out a feathery whisper that caressed his eardrums all the way to his heart, “open your eyes and look at me.”

Kihyun didn’t get it until he had complied. Changkyun’s gaze scared him. It was so intense, so violating, very harmoniously so, so hounding but Kihyun couldn’t shy away.

“You and I are both human beings who deserve happiness,”

Maybe Kihyun should have been more specific, telling him to state three true statements. Someday, Kihyun would stop acting on a whim and without processing his words first.

Changkyun breathed in and exhaled slowly, tilting his head and smiling softly. “You and I used to have cats. You and I don’t want this to be our first and last lunch.” He let the last one sink.

And Kihyun felt himself weighing down.

He broke gaze and started eating.

“Maybe you’re not so boring after all,” Kihyun teased because there was nothing else he could say; his heart was already contracting too much it was painful enough to keep the tears at bay. “So what brings you here?”

“Uh-uh, you got your question, it’s my turn now.” Changkyun was adding ketchup to his fries while he talked. “What’s your favourite Liszt piece?”

Kihyun raised an impressed eyebrow. “What made you assume-”

“For the love of God, Kihyun,” Changkyun interjected, not-so-gently stopping his chip midair and laying it on his plate, “I notice things. I stalk you. I'm psychic. Whatever you want to call it. Just answer one question without all those giddy ‘what-”

“Arabesque, the first of the two.” He firmly put in.

Changkyun’s lips worked into a slow smirk. Shaking his head, he said, “You could have gone for something less obvious than Debussy.”

Kihyun laughed so hard he almost choked. He didn’t care about the waitress, he didn’t care about Changkyun’s half-dumbfounded, half-amused expression. The sound was so unfamiliar to his very own ears yet he was this much high on the feeling it filled him up with to bother stopping this rush of pure inebriation.

“Easily his third Liebestraum.” Kihyun said when he had calmed down, the smile not yet fading. “Didn’t expect you to be this, um, informed.”

“Didn’t expect to get caught, you mean.” He thought Changkyun probably practiced that impish smile as well. “For what it’s worth, I applaud your choice.”

“Yes, that too.” Kihyun fanned his face. “Again, what brings you here?”

“That’s cheating, it answers two questions.” Changkyun argued.

“I'm not leaving, am I?” He was surprised to hear the words flowing out of his mouth so easily.

Changkyun smiled. “On a side note, I'm not a fan. I just find myself occasionally using our turntable. Contrary to my dad, he’s probably why I've come to listen to classical music so often.” His smile broadened. “Work, work is the reason I’m in your block.”

He weighed asking him about his origin, for Changkyun's eyes still filled him with the foreigner’s aura.

“I’ve lived three years out of my twenty-seven in France. That’s why I considered Debussy to be a low blow. And four in The States.”

Kihyun narrowed his eyes, momentarily forgetting about his sandwich. “You’re twenty-seven?” didn’t this day continue to surprise Yoo Kihyun. “You don’t sound twenty-seven.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Yes. No. I don't know.” He found himself stuttering and Changkyun was laughing.

“Secret for a secret?” Changkyun proposed and by far this was the craziest thing uttered so far.

Kihyun wanted to tell him not to push his luck so far, but he dreaded it might ruin the moment, not when he was finally beginning to enjoy Changkyun's company.

“Everyone has their ‘there are two kinds of people in this world’ criteria. Mine usually depends on those who are capable of making others open up to them.” He paused for what Kihyun could only assume was effect. And he got it. “What is it that you see every time you close your eyes while you’re in someone’s company?”

Whatever it was Changkyun saw, whatever it was he wanted to achieve by this question and whatever it was that gave him the impression, Kihyun was anything but ready to let go of that part of him.

“Try struggling with bad eye-sight then come again asking me that question.” Kihyun lied casually.

However, Changkyun didn’t reply; his smile faltered and he cast down his eyes. And if Kihyun's eyes didn’t fail him, he could visibly see Changkyun's lips utter two words, ‘ _not yet.’_

And that alone sent chills down his spine. He wanted to bolt to the door and never look back, never come back. Yoo Kihyun wanted to run away.

Changkyun's sincerity and attempted-spontaneity might have struck as bizarre, but they were also awe-inspiring. And it was Kihyun's turn now. “When was the last time you cried?” Kihyun ventured.

It was a slow smile this time, but he once again got Changkyun's undivided attention. He was just finishing his food. “Are you sure you really want to know?”

Kihyun didn’t get the question back then; he was sure his puzzlement showed on his face as well. But looking back at it seconds later, he understood what Changkyun had truly meant.

“Less than an hour ago,” was Changkyun's answer. He clamped his mouth shut after a hesitant moment of whether or not to add something.

Yoo Kihyun could do the maths nonetheless. But it didn’t make sense because he hadn’t seen Changkyun cry.

This time, it was Kihyun's hand that reached out to Changkyun's, but unlike the latter, Kihyun failed to play his thoughtless whim off. And Changkyun's eyes fell on his hesitant hand, then they switched to their owner’s face. They lingered there more than they did on his hands, which was longer than long enough. Kihyun was sure he was bound to buckle under that pressuring pair of eyes piercing him. In a way, he couldn’t withdraw his hand and he couldn’t fully reach out to Changkyun.

He was, once again, stuck in between.

Somewhere along the interminable minutes of silence and their interlocking eyes, among their hearts that vied to latch onto one another, came Changkyun's reality-shattering words,

“Would you hate me if I told you I have to go now?” his eyes were pleading.

As much as Kihyun wanted to beg him to stay, he shook his head. After all, Changkyun's question was addressing Kihyun's hate and not something else.

Kihyun watched him as he paid for both of their meals. He watched his back as he left; he watched his smile burn out and he felt tired. He felt like he needed to cry.

 

 

 

 

If seeking harmony and peace was forever wishful thinking, then Yoo Kihyun was glad to be getting a one-way ticket that easily.

He should have learnt by now that walking alone so late at night in shady lonely streets wasn’t the best strategy to staying safe.

Yoo Kihyun should have learnt.

He had been aware of the person following him for a while. He wasn’t really in the mood for a fight, not that he ever was, and he probably would lose if it came down to physical attributes –something he often lost at. He only had to walk three more blocks before he reached the friendly fire escape that had often been his salvation. Unfortunately, one of those three blocks was plain abandoned and thoroughly empty.

Salvation? Wishful thinking.

He was being manhandled into an alley, roughly pushed against the cold concrete wall as a hand covered his mouth, not that it was needed; he couldn’t see a living soul anywhere. Because striving to keep one’s alive status required finding another route. But it was inevitable, what was happening back then.

That was Karma bitch.

It didn’t mollify his fear. He was face to face with a guy who probably killed kittens for fun. A knife was against his throat as the guy’s knee pinned him to the wall.

“I think you own Kim-sshi something, _sweetie._ ” His voice was so ugly; it made Kihyun cringe all the more. It sounded bloodthirsty; it had nothing to it but that. He didn’t want to close his eyes; he refused to but it proved to be a harder task than he had thought. “I'm so fucking sick of seeing the likes of you get their way with him, so fucking sick.” He hissed. “So what the fuck, man, might as well do what I want.”

He kneed Kihyun in the abdomen and the latter doubled over in excruciating pain. He hated this. He wished all this could stop. He was being kicked and he was starting to cough out blood as his head hit the trash, head getting lighter.

Why did everything have to be this way? He felt the tears in his eyes, triggered more by his thoughts and not his physical pain.

Kihyun could feel the punch; he could feel his knees failing to support his weight as he was once again being pinned to the wall. He could smell the nauseating smell of the rubbish; he hoped he would faint before he consciously witnessed its taste. The aftermaths would be bad as it was. He didn’t need the memories.

He could hear cusses being thrown around; he could feel his hair being grabbed out of his scalp and his face against the icy dirty metallic surface of the trash-bin as he was being bent over. Not only tasting frustrated tears and livid blood, but also whatever those bags contained.

Yoo Kihyun refused to close his eyes. Not until he fainted anyways.

When Kihyun came to, he was numb. He sniffled, trying to wipe the sticky blood with the back of his shaking hand. He got into his pants and looked for his jacket –for his keys. He then walked till he reached the damned block.

He couldn’t feel a damn thing. Yoo Kihyun wished he couldn’t feel a damn thing.

He was faced with a feeling he was quite accustomed to. It had been done, yet he wanted to be saved. He didn’t know what he needed to be saved from, but he had this pressing feeling of ‘rescue me somehow’. Addressed to no one in particular because that was how alone he was. He just felt empty and he felt that day by day he was being rendered even more so, that one day he would wake up utterly and thoroughly hollow; a vessel with no soul. He would soon be a shell of what he had once been. More of a shell.

Still he refused to let way to tears.

Not while he paced, not while he showered, not while he checked his bottles, not while he made sure nothing was too visible on his face.

But that night, he cried in his bed so hard he thought maybe he could drain his body from water.

This world was sick, so wrong and so sick and everyone was infected.

He was contaminated, even when he begged to find the uncontaminated.

 

The following night, the fire-escape had a box containing chocolate and a note with a handsomely-written apology and no name.

He was still numb. He hated this. He recalled screaming so loud while it rained and he wailed.

This hurt; this was the worst.

 

                      

It had taken Kihyun two full days before he felt in control enough not to have another breakdown.

He was sitting on one of the steps of the fire escape, one of the closest to his window, dangling his legs and letting the unkind wind hit his face as his fingers wanly curled around the railing. In an explicable way, it was one of the things that made him feel fully alive. His thoughts drifted to the one person he wanted them not to drift to. He was emptier than to sport such a feeling.

But he was also the only person who bothered with Yoo Kihyun.

Nights always reminded Kihyun of him. It was either thoughts of him or thoughts of three nights ago. Kihyun preferred the former.

He hadn’t talked to Changkyun in six days save for the awkwardly-casual-bump-into-neighbour accident the day before. It was safe to say he liked him. He had this underdeveloped feeling for Changkyun, but he knew that hour they spent together was memorable –something he would always cherish.

But that wasn’t what made Kihyun admit it. It was the fact that in spite knowing he liked being with Changkyun, it wasn’t because Changkyun was in the right place in the right time, rather because Kihyun himself enabled it.

“I just wish you’d go away.” He said to his companion who had been standing silently behind him for a while now.

“Why are you always so mean to me?”

“Minhyuk, I don’t know how to put it into words but your presence stirs up so many unwelcomed feelings inside of me and I don’t really like it.” It was true. Kihyun slipped the small bottle into his jacket’s pocket, fully aware it was by far too late to escape Minhyuk’s notice.

Minhyuk stepped out of the dark and didn’t speak till he had settled down next to Kihyun. “You know I’ll always be there for you.”

Kihyun stifled the impulse to tell him that this was the crux of the problem.

“You’re alone, Kihyun. You act like it doesn’t bother you, but I can tell. Everyone would be able to tell. That’s why you never let yourself have anyone near you.”

Kihyun could hear a flick. Minhyuk had started smoking, as if his attitude could get any worse. Kihyun usually ignored him when he started talking like that. He did a whole lot of ignoring about the things he didn’t like. He just hoped it would disappear one day. But it was never the case.

“Is it the third time this week? How longer do you think you can keep this without anyone’s noticing? Why don’t you ever listen to-”

He shut Minhyuk out. He could clearly tell he wasn’t about to leave; at least he was in enough control to mute him. In addition, something else engrossed his mind instead of the words that hurt like daggers twisting in his heart. It was in this dark alley a bit to his left that a woman was getting harassed. Kihyun could see bystanders who turned a blind-eye; he would have probably been one of them himself.

But there had to be a knight in a shining armor.

Mournfully, Kihyun started dwelling on the thought. Oh, how much he wished there had been someone three nights ago in a similar alley. One that stood up not to two assholes ganging up on a poor young lady, but one asshole who ganged up on an undeserving-of-such-beating young boy.

He leaned forward as to shove his hands and head between the banister, and in melancholy, he watched the events unveil. 

He fought back, enough to scare them away and save the young lady, but not enough to come out completely unscathed. So much for a knight in a less-than-shiny armor.

Despite the chilling cold, he gave her his jacket to cover her torn clothes. At that she hurried away after hastily thanking him. He was soon back to the main street.

Kihyun closed his eyes. He made a point of never feeling sorry for himself, and so far so good, self-pity was the supreme form of pathetic. He was a lot of things, but not pathetic.

The exact duration of his reverie wasn’t estimated, but he could hear a knock on the door, the knock that had a preceding one which he had decided to ignore.

Reluctantly, he went to the door, not clearly seeing in front of him, but he was intact.

It was Changkyun.

He didn’t think Changkyun looked so dandy.

“Hey, there,” Changkyun said warmly despite looking cold himself. His voice sounded as though he were breathing under water. “Can you lend me your key? I kinda forgot mine.”

With a far-away mind –through blurry vision as Kihyun was still pretty much recovering from his auto-pilot mode, and without even nodding, he rummaged through his pockets, trying to fish his key out. He could hear things falling from his pocket but he had successfully got the key out and handed it to Changkyun.

But Lim Changkyun didn’t leave yet. Through his increasingly unsteady vision, he could see the qualm written all over Changkyun's distressed face. “Say, Kihyun, can I do something but promise me you’ll ignore?” his strangled voice said.

This time, Kihyun could nod. “I’d probably forget by morning.” He laughed bitterly and it didn’t last long.

Kihyun was cut mid-laugh when he was pulled into a tight embrace. His head was buried in the crook of Changkyun's neck. He could smell his sweaty T-shirt and what remained of his cologne through the thin fabric of the only thing he was wearing. He could feel Changkyun's hand against his head pressing him closer and through the numbness of his mental pain, he still could feel Changkyun's cheek gently resting on the top of his head while his other hand pressed Kihyun's body closer to him. He was adrift not so long ago, only did the wind pull him out of that quicksand. And now, Changkyun was helping him stand on stable ground.

“I’m sorry,” Changkyun choked, voice threatening to break with the throttling force of his emotion. He repeated it once more in a lower tone then added, “I just felt like I could die if I don’t hug you right now.” Kihyun could hear the trace of a weak laugh in his voice.

It was intoxicating, the hint of laughter mingled with unshed tears all while trying to breathe under water. Had it ever occurred to you how one couldn’t really speak and cry at the same time?

Obviously, Lim Changkyun could pull that off.

Kihyun was looking at the ground when Changkyun let go of him. He was lost in time along with unfamiliar other things when the door was closed. Kihyun wasn’t the one to close it this time. He didn’t think he would have been capable to perform that simple act of shutting the door anyways.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy, it was 7K but I took away your last 3k to save you guys from unnecessary boredom yay:")  
> too soon to party, folks, next week you get your 7k (god! I hate long updates but oops I do it again, and again and again) ... hope you like it xx


	3. Rebeccapurple

 

 

How long did it take to have a mental breakdown? And how long did it last?

Did reliving your nightmare qualify you to have one? Or did an overreaction prompt one?

Kihyun still had to establish if nearly five years ago was the best time of his life or the darkest era he had had. He hadn’t dreamt of Hyuk in a long time, yet appearing ever so frequently whenever he drifted to unconsciousness was inevitable.

They were sitting next to each other at the cliff above a lake close to where they lived; way after their curfew. They were dangling their feet like the little kids they had been, with wild ambitions and naïve dreams and hopes for the future, staring at some white light complementing the sky.

Naïve innocent young love. A spectrum of mesmerizing colours dispersing from that blinding white love. So white and so pure and stain free, full of blushes, giggles and sudden declarations of everlasting love and promises of ‘forever’.

The lie called forever.  

Now Kihyun was barely trying to hold on to the moment, doing his best to get stuck in it, literally clutching to the arms of the clock in wistful hope of slowing it down, providing one more second, a millisecond longer, half regretting all the time wasted on anything but being together.

“What happens when black clashes with white?” he had asked while their shoulders touched.

Hyuk was gazing at the sky, always the dreamer. “I don't know. A new colour, grey?”

“Does that mean both colours have lost their identity?”

Hyuk turned to look at him with a wonder-like smile. “Wouldn’t you give up something in order to have a better one? It’s a small sacrifice to make for the sake of a better change.”

Sometimes Hyuk said stuff like that which Kihyun didn’t really understand at the time; he always felt as though he was floating. He felt it was like being in someone else’s dream.

But this time was different; having sat there together so many times, the only variable was what they had talked about. He wished their first time had been anything like their last time together. He wished he hadn’t ignored the warning signs –that he hadn’t treaded down that path.

They say older than you by a day and he knew more than you by a year.

Hyuk was a year older than Kihyun. Hand always reaching out to him, always the selfless, always the loving, always there.

Take the dream out of the dreamer and what was left for them?

Hyuk wasn’t sitting next to him, their shoulders weren’t brushing, their hands weren’t touching, their hearts weren’t syncing. Hyuk was confessing something, and all Kihyun could think of was a world without Hyuk; it kept adding up to his emptiness. Their eyes didn’t meet; Kihyun was talking to the back of the person he once was willing to offer up his life for.

 The worst thing in life was being rendered insignificant, so invalid that your entire existence amounted to nothing and no one would ever heed your presence or absence, much less your life or death.

Maybe he wasn’t justified; he knew for a fact now that this was an overreaction.

He had been dead for a while, but that day particularly, Kihyun know he would break them.

And he did.

At that he learnt life’s earliest and most basic teaching; they would get closer, and closer, and they would leave, leaving you alone, stranded and hanging by a thread, clutching to whatever remnants that had once been your sole purpose of existence.

People spoke more pain than love. There was a very lovely spell to pain. Everyone suffered, everyone grew into it as soon as they grow out of it. It was inescapable and everyone understood that; a burden we all exchanged shouldering its weight. The more people there to shoulder it, the easier it became to bear, the lighter the person felt. In a warped way, Kihyun concluded that was why bondage and masochism were regarded as supreme, albeit twisted, forms of love.

If your pain became too felt, too attached to the extending hand, it became the same as not being felt.

 

Kihyun woke up with a start. He was wet, drenched to the tip of his toes, just lying on the bathroom’s floor. One would have thought he would soon learn, but he never would.

He wished it were the same with his human-relations. He wished he wouldn’t learn and always allow one more chance; one last chance.

With a weary heart, he stepped into the shower in his already water-drenched clothes. Elements of nature, one of the rare things that made him feel alive. He did his best and tried to look representable; he couldn’t think straight but he could still see it wasn’t even dusk yet. At last, he left his room and headed for the place he had been living in till four years ago.

Kihyun had a sinking feeling in his stomach, like something had gone wrong; not that he had any idea what more could go wrong with his life.

He thought he had abandoned this love; that it was laid to rest. But even when he took the news of Hyuk’s engagement, he couldn’t help feeling an array of disjointed emotions.

He left the institute as quickly as he had come; however, he was more in ruins than the state he had initially come in. Suffocated, he had all the air punched out of his lungs and yet he was forced to keep breathing.

This was his past, he was running away from his present, and he couldn’t see his future.

While Kihyun struggled to open the door to his room, with his shaking hands and heart, he could hear someone calling out to him. He didn’t look over his shoulder; he needn’t to. All he did was spring into the bathroom and lock its door. He could hear silence. He couldn’t hear his thoughts; he couldn’t hear his tears. Kihyun only leaned on the door and for a minute he merely stood there staring at the ceiling, biting back his tears.

He felt like a part of him was forever lost with every person gone, as though not only had they taken their luggage and set off, but also an indispensable part of his soul had been ripped off; a part that he had to learn how to survive without because he couldn’t even dare to ask back for it.

But he left Hyuk years ago, why was he feeling this now?

“Kihyun,” a voice came through the door, “can you please open the door?”

He couldn’t possibly open the door even if he wanted to. The numbness set in, he wasn’t crying; he preferred crying to this nothingness. He walked till he had reached the sink. Slowly, he lifted his head to stare at his unforgiving reflection in the mirror. His pale face, his diluted pupils, his chapped lips –there wasn’t a single trace of life in that doll-face. Yoo Kihyun looked plastic.

Still, throughout the chaos of his mind, he could make out Changkyun’s voice as the latter gently knocked on the door.

Doing nothing to answer his caller, he stepped back, watching the stranger in the mirror mimic him; there was nothing to mimic nonetheless. In one angry swoosh, Kihyun threw his keys at the mirror, watching his face crack, watching his reflection become pieces. Bitterly, he wondered if this was the physical manifestation of what he had emotionally done to Hyuk four years ago.

Those sharp shards of broken mirror.

Changkyun's voice came shouting, urgent and frantic. “Please, Kihyun, open the door and let us talk.”

He didn’t reply; he didn’t know why Changkyun was there –why he cared. Kihyun slipped against the door, not daring to touch his face, trying to breathe.

“Say, doc,” Kihyun began, voice small and weak; but he just needed to talk, “a week ago you told me everyone has their ‘ _there are two kinds of people in this world’_. I don't know why I'm telling you this but for me, there’re those who stay and those who go … and so far almost everyone is dubbed under the latter.” He blurted, surprised at how steady his voice came out. He fidgeted in his pocket as he met the silence on Changkyun's part, rotating his small bottle with one hand while looking at it in a bored manner, as though it didn’t control his life.

_Could you ever be the anomaly?_

He didn’t know whether Changkyun had left or not but he kept talking. “I don't know what’s wrong with me. I'm a mess, I'm more charged, I'm more erratic. I'm emptier and I carve everything I know I can't have.” Kihyun would have gone further but the tears threatened to unleash themselves; he was angry, frustrated, inhibited.

“You need to let this pain go,” Changkyun didn’t miss a beat. The bottle froze in Kihyun's hand. It was as though he had been electrocuted, “you have to feel the anger and let it go, Kihyun. You are going to explode some time and the effect won’t be so desirable. So might as well use your feelings before they become a dangerous weapon just because your hands are unskilled with them. Everything has a capacity, everything is bound to snap when that red line is stepped over. Maybe then you’d remember where the line was initially set.” He paused, his breath audible even with the barrier between them. “You are going to be plummeted into a direct confrontation with your feelings someday, and you are going to lose.”

This was exactly why Kihyun preferred the silence. Lim Changkyun was behind his bathroom door, talking some sense into him. Kihyun, however, wasn’t stable enough to make any decisions. He didn’t trust his judgment; he didn’t trust himself. He was teetering between encouraging himself to take a surefire road to self-destruction, and stepping back and postponing going down that inevitable road to hell. What was he even doing there, what did he intend on doing, what did Lim Changkyun intend on preventing?

He heard Changkyun whisper a not-so-audible ‘ _hold on’_.

And it was the loudest thing Yoo Kihyun had ever heard.

He lolled his head back, regulating his breath. And he didn’t speak for a while.

“Something is missing. And I wish I could just forget. There’s nothing I’d not give just so I’d not feel.” Kihyun's head sank into his knees. He felt cold, colder than before. He wanted to talk to someone, he wanted to open up to someone; he wanted to get better. But the last time he did open up, he wasn’t the only one who ended up scarred. The scar was still imminently burning with raw pain as if it were just yesterday. And he would always remember.

He didn’t want to share too much of him with anyone. Because when that person was gone, he didn’t want to miss more pieces than he already would. He needed no links, no memories, no regrets, nothing reminding him of them and of the pain of them not being there.

“Please go away, I want to be alone.” Kihyun felt a pang of hurt in his chest. He heard a sharp sob coming out of his mouth and he clenched to his chest as he struggled to breathe. He could feel his hand throbbing in pain but it was nothing even remotely close to that he felt eating away at his heart. He couldn’t let go of his shirt; he couldn’t let go of his pain.

Yoo Kihyun was someone who preferred anodynes to a cure.

“No one ever wants to. I’m not going to leave. I'm not going to let you be here alone, Kihyun.” Changkyun countered. Kihyun couldn’t see him, but his voice suggested he was hardly letting any air pass between the door and his lips.

Kihyun was one step closer to the edge; he didn’t want Changkyun to be there when he broke. He needed to go away. His voice needed to stop tethering Kihyun to this sad reality.

“Go away. I don’t _want_ you to be here.” He said more sharply, perhaps slightly snappily.

There was hardly a pause.

“When I was in highschool, I had fallen in love. It was the first time I had been in love, and I thought I had found my soulmate.” Changkyun started and Kihyun could hear him slipping against the door on the other side. He could picture the frustration drawn on his face with a colourful tinge of pain. “It was a one sided love and I was suffering in silence, you know. We were so close, and it was so hard keeping my feelings to myself. It was so hard because I couldn’t go back on my feelings and like hell I was mature enough to just be friends. At times I thought it would be easier not to feel a damn thing instead of that pain, but I realized I’d not change a thing. If I could go back, I’d fall in love again,” he paused, swallowing hard, “I’d get hurt again.”

All Kihyun could register was the thought of Changkyun seeming like he was revisiting a very dark alley in his mind, a painful one.

“I still feel strongly. I can't erase my love. I'm still till this very moment in love with my friend even tho I know I was rejected. Or at least I thought so, I'm not so sure anymore.”

Kihyun was confused. “Why are you telling me that?” he asked in that small voice.

“Because…” Kihyun knew this moment of hesitation was Changkyun deciding to choose a different path, rectifying a phrasing. “Because you have to be able to tell how you feel. Which is that you miss, the person or the memories you had together? The first might be true love, the second certainly is dispensable.” He concluded.

He didn’t want to think about that. Kihyun didn’t care how much he had loved Hyuk; it didn’t matter because he was on the ground once again.

He didn’t speak. He closed his eyes and he didn’t recall falling asleep.

 

\---

 

He was often told he couldn’t run away from his problems. But he didn’t relent. He thought if he ran faster, then at some point he was bound to outrun his problems. Sadly, it was impossible for him to exert that much effort without running the risk of ending up in a hospital bed. Or worse: running into himself.

During his adolescence years, he had developed a habit of seeking a high place, always the roof. It was higher, emptier, scarier, and more silent. It was everything he aspired to and everything he ran away from in his life.

To Kihyun, it represented something that went along those lines. You were alone, standing on the ledge, looking down at everything; everything seemed insignificant. People were the size of insects, with their vivid lives and malaise they crawled away the same way he crawled in his skin. The city lights seemed like a dream. The noise accumulated it became a far-off, soft hummed lullaby. The air whooshing by and sucking away his problems. The strong breeze making him dance with every gentle push, making him toy with the thought of dancing further on the ledge. The rise in temperature making him realize how alive he was, how he would never be warm –never comfortable in his own skin. He had been soaring all his life, maybe he subconsciously yearned to know how the ground felt.

The literal representation of having everything that killed him making him feel alive.

And he always got that feeling, a kind of rush he was high on. A feeling that made his head go blank, that heightened his senses and dulled his thoughts.

Nothing was daunting but the comprehension of the distance separating him from the ground, or from the sky. That was the question, to fall or to soar. To despair or to hope.

The feeling either made his heart race, or it slowed it down he could go into a vegetative state. It held a sway over him with such intensity akin to that of a whirlpool sucking him in and he just refused to fight for his life. Because there, was a chance presented. The sweet temptation of finally reaching an end, a closure, of giving it up –of giving everything up and finally having a place to rest his head. His head being under water, desperately in need of oxygen, but losing himself is by far more liberating; an out-of-body experience, haunting. Ultimately, he wouldn’t be in search of something to keep him afloat, but rather some weight to send him down.

Be it a mind trick or be it reality, he was hearing music; a pungent sonata, flowing out of one of the rooms in that high building. A lonely soul playing to another soul just as equally lonely in the stealth of the unkind night.

He smiled. Kihyun closed his eyes and his hands started moving as if the tunes had invisible strings moving them to the rhythm.

Two C minor with a sharp G, octaves rising for a brief second, four smooth E’s, a lot of C minors; his hands moved smoothly. It was sad how all amazing virtuosos were lonely souls. He knew he would soon become ashes –that piece always made him painfully conscious of how easy it was to become ashes.

Ashes were attributed to flames, yet it was snowing.

“Didn’t know music could get a person this ecstatic,” a voice that didn’t belong to the night said. He didn’t open his eyes until a jacket was being put on his shoulders.

He was seeing a guy he had met only a few hours ago, some artist. Also the same person he had escaped his apartment to attend to the call of the night. He moved till he was standing too close to Kihyun, but that wasn’t a problem now; they had been closer. Kihyun couldn’t even make out his face; his high status and the moist the air caused in his eyes contributed to the reason why Kihyun was looking at his companion like the other didn’t exist.

Kihyun started kissing him.

“I've slept with so many guys before,” the guy began when they broke away, and Kihyun spun around and around and around till he was sitting on the ledge, “and the way everyone did it spoke out their story.”

“Oh yea,” Kihyun gave him a crooked smile; he tasted of nicotine and mint. “And what’s mine?”

He laughed, sat next to Kihyun and struggled to light up his cigarette in spite of the racing wind and fallen snow. “You’re damaged.”

That drew out a very bitter laugh from Kihyun. He looked up at the sky –at the falling snow. “Aren’t we all?”

“Agreed,” he spoke slowly, “but not all the damaged try to become more so.”

Kihyun examined his face. The man wasn’t addressing him; he was detached, his eyes focused on something only seen to him.

Kihyun pondered. “Would you have picked me up if I wasn’t so?”

“No.” He said. “But it looks like you need someone to tell you this. Form an attachment and your bag becomes peripherally lighter.”

Kihyun laughed genuinely this time. “What gave you the impression?”

He half turned to Kihyun, his finger started tracing Kihyun's lower lip. “I wonder how you looked before your very first scar.”

Kihyun could see the depth of the hurt in his eyes, a soul equally tormented. Everyone was in pain; everyone had their story; everyone chose a way to deal their pain. Kihyun didn’t look away until the man’s finger had left his lip.

Kihyun extended his hand to catch a fallen snowflake. As soon as it had rested in the palm of his hand, it had melted and slipped through his fingers.

 

He was startled when he woke up. He was staring at Changkyun's eyes. Kihyun didn’t remember seeing Changkyun, not to mention being this physically close to him. He was in what he could only assume was a hospital bed.

Kihyun closed his eyes because his head buzzed; he couldn’t focus his gaze. And somehow, he was back to nightmare land.

 

When he opened his eyes again, Changkyun wasn’t there but he could swear he could hear his voice. It didn’t seem as sweetly rimmed with melodies as it always sounded; it had an edge to it that startled him ever so slightly. Kihyun let his ears lead his eyes.

He was arguing with an older man who seemed unfazed by the fanatic zeal in Changkyun's voice and sheer panic in his eyes. The man didn’t seem human to Kihyun; he doubted he could ever stand this passively while someone seemed to slowly come undone before his very eyes.

Changkyun was saying something about someone being in pain, about not inflicting more pain, about his incapability to do ‘it’ because it defied his morals and was a very ‘inhumane’ thing to do. Kihyun lost interest at that and he let his eyes wander back to the sickly ceiling.

Lim Changkyun was a very peculiar person. He seemed more driven than Kihyun could ever be. There was a very persistent, almost irritating idealism about his very being. There was an air about him, something about the way he carried himself around; Kihyun couldn’t yet put his finger to it. But he knew it was something that made Changkyun all the more appealing to his eyes.

It made him instinctively want to be close to Changkyun.

“Hey,” he heard a voice call out to him from the door. He waited for the footsteps, waited till Changkyun was standing before his eyes. “You fainted again. Seriously, you need to pay more attention to yourself.” It wasn’t reproachful; it was only concerned. And Kihyun's heart felt wretched.

He sat up. Changkyun tried to object but he paid no heeds.

“You can't leave yet. The doctor said you should at least rest here for one more night.”

“I appreciate your concern but I can take it from here.” Kihyun said while doing the routine. IV unplug, clumsy foot shuffle, hasty dressing –all except there was one different element this time: Changkyun's verbal objection which ended up with a physical representation of preventing him to leave the room.

“Look, I don’t want to be here. I’ll rest in my room.” He argued, really hoping Changkyun would budge.

“No, you need to be taken care of. Rest.” Changkyun gently argued back, his eyes concerned and his touch tender. Kihyun hated this; he hated how Changkyun cared.

Kihyun tried to push past him, but Changkyun didn’t move. “Please.” Kihyun started pleading. The desperation crawled into his voice all the way to his heart, faster than he could come up with something intelligible. “I really hate hospitals and they make me feel sicker. I promise to rest in my bed.”

Changkyun's eyes were beyond commiserating; he was considering letting him leave. Good. Yoo Kihyun didn’t need a caretaker.

“I’ll drive you home.”

It was the best deal he could get. Taking one more step to the door he almost fell down but Changkyun quickly caught him. Kihyun then knew for a fact he could never regain his balance just so he could keep Changkyun to his side –make Changkyun support him for as long as he needed it.

Kihyun refused to meet his eyes, not while Changkyun led him through the hallways, and not while he drove. He was decent enough not to strike up a conversation.

Why was he always in the right place in the right time?

When Changkyun killed the ignition in front of the building, he didn’t move, and neither did Kihyun.

“I don’t know you as half as I wish I could, but I can tell I want to be there for you.” Changkyun began, his eyes focused on the far-off distance. He seemed to want to say more; he seemed like there was something he refrained from saying. And his deep voice inescapably propelled Kihyun on; urging him to luxuriate in that liberating feeling of perpetually falling deeper. “There are so many things I wish I could tell you, but this isn’t the right time. All I know is it hurts to see you in pain. It feels like-” he stopped midsentence, even in that dark night, Kihyun could see his eyebrows furrowing in pain. He saw Changkyun close his eyes and try to breathe –the way he would often find himself doing. “Like I could feel your pain as though your nerves were connected to my brain.”

Electricity had taken a liking to Kihyun's veins.

Changkyun's words always rendered him speechless, mentally speaking. Could someone really radiate as much warmth as to engulf his shuddering being? If so, could he be nested within its range without jeopardizing to diminish it, without wearing it out and turning it cold the same way he was turned ice-cold long ago? Maybe fading wouldn’t be such a bad thing now; Kihyun knew at least it wasn’t going to be painful.

“Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?” Kihyun wondered from the deadness of their silence, reciting a question Freud himself failed to answer.

If his question had fazed Changkyun, he didn’t let it into his voice. It felt like he had an answer prepared for all kinds of questions. “I don't know. Somewhere in your heart waiting for you to come seek it.”

“Then why don’t I have access to it? How come I don’t have control over something that’s mine?” it was that kind of questions that made him feel at the end of his rope.

“Then where do you think a feeling go when it’s repressed?” he had to look at Changkyun who was smiling in an extremely compassionate manner. After a few beats of deep staring, Changkyun leaned in, reaching to open Kihyun's door. Kihyun could feel the corporal form of the heat he wagered emitted from Changkyun's body. “It’s because it is never forgotten, just buried till you decide you truly want to dig it up. Till you're ready to.”

“Why?” that one line question conceived all the why’s out there; all the why’s the universe left unanswered Kihyun questioned there had ever really existed an answer.

But back then, he only needed one answer.

“Do I really need a reason?” this was how deep the ocean was. A voice that resonated and hit and echoed back, an infinite loop till the voice could finally die down, millennia later. But its waves would forever burn in your memory,

Kihyun inhaled sharply at that.

Changkyun didn’t retract his hand.

Seconds later –after he was in enough control over his overridden heart, Kihyun spoke, “If you were to go to any kind of stores,” his eyes closed like that day in the diner when he asked one of _those_ questions, “you’d never want to buy a defected product. And if it happened, by sheer mistake, that you bought something less than ‘your’ perfect, you’d go back demanding a refund.”  
Kihyun stopped only to smile bitterly knowing where he was heading. A part of him was hoping Changkyun wouldn’t project, wouldn’t connect to what Kihyun was saying –was implying. But the other needy part begged him to.

“So what if you can't go back because you’re too nice? Because you know that this is the only time a refund isn’t possible, because the product can't be resold. It’ll only be deconstructed to rise anew as something entirely different, to a realm where buried feelings and forgotten memories reside.”

“I wouldn’t demand a refund.” It came out confident, decisive and irrevocable. Kihyun's eyelids twitched. The way Changkyun spoke made his every bone twitch. “I’d dedicate my life to being happy with what I have. I mean, it wasn’t the product’s fault for being defected.”

Changkyun was a fool, but Kihyun was also a cowardly fool.

Kihyun pushed the door fully open and he instantly stepped out, ignoring how warm Changkyun's hand felt beneath his once he reached for the door handle.

He could hear Changkyun getting out as well; it was futile to even wish Changkyun wouldn’t call out to him. Kihyun just hoped he could spare himself the eye contact.

“Kihyun.” Changkyun called out. He froze but didn’t turn around. What were they? “What is it that you want?”

Taken aback, Kihyun voiced what he truly felt. “I just want to be happy.” Kihyun was smiling weakly as he looked at the ground. Changkyun had that effect on him; Changkyun belonged to the former group in his very own ‘two kinds of people in the world’.

“Then let us start from here and take you to happy.” He said resolutely. A very tranquil, very heartfelt, very beautiful smile embroidered the salvor’s compassionate features.

The only thing that reverberated in Kihyun's mind was that they couldn’t; it was too late. “I just don’t want to simply end up a statistic.”

“Turn around and look me in the eyes.” And his voice, it was audacious, as if it weren’t afraid to explore the depth of the world, to see through the projections the eyes perceived. It was literally a voice that could ‘see’. “It’s your face I’m talking to and not your back.”

He was scared of what lied beyond those words. Kihyun was scared that going further would burn too many bridges while he wasn’t willing to risk getting singed.

And he turned. He could see Changkyun's eyes sparkling with starlight. He could see the black becoming more brilliant despite the dark; he could see his smile that was warmer than his body.

And Kihyun could feel the moist in his eyes. There was nothing more pure than what his eyes were seeing back then.

Changkyun slowly started taking confident strides till they could be sharing the same breath. “You’re staying the night in my room. I’m taking care of you and no, you have no say in that.” His fingers interlaced with Kihyun's and he wasn’t looking the latter in the eye as he spoke, only at the ever so bright stars.

Yoo Kihyun had never been happier to oblige to something.

 

 

 

 

Kihyun's head was throbbing by the time he had opened his eyes. He could feel things mixing up in his brain, some memories. He could feel voices entangling with a vanilla-like scent, hazed pictures panged with burning colours. He could hear refractions and sunlight, see broken reflections and mirrors. When things didn’t make much sense, he focused on getting the facts straight.

The night before, he drifted to sleep at the sound of Changkyun's voice. And when he dreamed, it was of Changkyun's voice. Kihyun had started talking to him casually; he sometimes smiled, genuinely moved by Changkyun's talk; other times Kihyun felt his heart ache for him. He spoke of everything casually; it seemed like Changkyun didn’t acknowledge pain. He didn’t seem bothered by doing most of the talking, and Kihyun admired that in him.

To Kihyun, Lim Changkyun was an only child whose mom died at a young age. Not your typical not-letting-the-world-wash-away-my-smile, at least he didn’t make it sound like such. It was a small insignificant remark in his speech, those things one said as part of the speech –a conjunction maybe. He became a doctor because of his father. He had a bestfriend whom could make Changkyun talk passionately about; the same way he did about his father. The three years he spent in France were an eye-opener; he didn’t elaborate on that one and Kihyun made a mental note to press the subject later, almost provoking a bitter smile on his part when he realized Lim Changkyun just made him make plans for the near future.

When Kihyun wandered till he had reached the bookshelf, he realized they weren’t all medicine. There was also poetry. He almost felt like teasing Changkyun who said he used to be an avid reader. Kihyun didn’t buy the past tense nonetheless.

He was glad he fell asleep before Changkyun could ask him about his bringing up.

Changkyun was gone by the time he had woken up; Kihyun, however, didn’t know how to feel about that.

There was a sticky note on his forehead and a small plate with some cookies on the nightstand to his right. The note read ‘ _Had to leave, sorry. Cheer up, champ!_ ’ he carefully folded the note and put it in his back-pocket. Kihyun started looking for his jacket as a cookie was perched between his lips; he took the fire-escape down to his room.

He ignored Minhyuk who was lying on Kihyun's couch reading a book; he even left his room and started heading out without uttering a word. They had been through this so many times. Once he appeared, he would have to tell his piece then leave; there could be no ignoring when it came down to Minhyuk.

The day was hot for a winter morning; Minhyuk was tagging along. And Kihyun was taking the most crowded route he could think of: the park.

“Maybe I should be more cautious of your neighbour, Kihyun.” Minhyuk began. “I didn’t think you’d take me so literally when I told you to form a human connection.”

“I thought my life could go more awry.” Kihyun sneered.

“Careful, there, you wouldn’t want to relive the massacre you initiated four years ago.”

That comment stung.

“Don’t you have anyone else to bother, Minhyuk?” he almost bumped into a running kid. Whenever Kihyun looked at kids he found himself smiling. They were filled with so much positive energy, so much happiness, eyes so wide with wonder and hearts so pure with intentions, no gender barriers, no social barriers, nothing … just bonding.

“You know the answer to that question well enough.” He said after a short laugh.

Kihyun searched for the lollipop in his pocket, unwrapped it and started sucking at it as he sat down under a tree. He decided to take a break and try to be affected with the halo those children cast.

“I'm considering what to get you for your birthday. I'm thinking of making a warning sign that you could wear. ‘Keep away, danger’ or something like that.” He sat next to Kihyun, not touching him.

“No funny. Try harder.” He was like that annoying background noise. Kihyun tried to focus more on the children but didn’t mute him altogether.

“I don’t want to annoy you, not today so rest assured. I just don’t want you to get hurt.” Before he could caress Kihyun's cheek, the latter shot him an admonishing glare, and it wasn’t for the gesture.

“Kihyun, you once thought you wouldn’t lose Hyuk, and look where the two of you are now. When Changkyun finds out, it’s just going to be one of those episodes. But unlike that time with Hyuk, you would be beyond repair.”

At that, Kihyun sneered again. “I was beyond repair back then. Please don’t bring up Hyuk.” The pain was still fresh. There were plenty of things that could go south before Changkyun found out about anything. Kihyun still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact Changkyun had been trying so hard to bring someone as flawed and as monstrous into his life. This wasn’t like the clash of two colours; this couldn’t produce grey.

“Did you even check your pockets?” This was Minhyuk’s lowest blow.

Kihyun started humming a tune. “Please go away, I want to be alone now.”

“There’s a reason you don’t belong,” he continued and Kihyun's attention shifted to a flying dandelion seed. He always felt suffocated at the sight of the weightless dandelions –a seed that wind couldn’t quite place, insignificant and helpless against the vastness of the universe as the wind bullied it into never belonging and eventually forced it into evanescing into the unknown.

He snapped out of his thoughts at the realization Minhyuk had gone away. He could hear a boy talking to his father.

“Papa, am I always going to be afraid of the dark?” the boy had asked.

The hardest questions in life were those asked by a child. A child’s inexperience and pleas for a simple answer made it incredibly hard to come up with an answer. The father dismissed the conversation with a simple ‘no’ and that he would soon be growing up to become an adult who was scared of nothing. Kihyun had to stifle the impulse not to feel salty.

 _No, kiddo, darkness wouldn’t scare you anymore_.

Commitment would scare you. School grades, losing people, not forming a connection, being alone, moodiness, longing for what you couldn’t have, losing passion, empty promises, empty words, loaded morning sighs, words never said, goodbyes never bid, broken hearts, feeling like a failure, being lost, hankering for the undeserving, cold hugs, futile reprimands –and everything that could sum up your life would scare you.

And the punchline was that no one was ever going to tell him that because he would never be ready.

He started walking again. He was going to visit the orphanage; he was going to meet to meet the little twins.

 

Kihyun spent the whole day with the twins. He even took them out to the amusement park; seemingly, he could only fit in with kids. When he walked them back to the orphanage, Hyungwon tugged at his sleeve, making them stop just before the main door.

“Kihyunnie, have you been eating well?” he was an eleven year old child yet there he was worrying about Yoo Kihyun.

Kihyun laughed. “Yes, I have. You should try finishing all your plate some time too.”

“You look pale,” it was Hoseok. Their wide eyes both scrutinized Kihyun; it was hard to keep up his lie. He was happy their span of concentration didn’t last that long; they could be easily diverted.

“Maybe he’s having a bad day, Wonho. He looked worse last time.” Hyungwon said with a sigh. Kihyun watched them bicker for a while before he interfered, suppressing a smile.

“You should get married soon like Hyuk. How could you be this old and not be married?” Hoseok said as he avoided a playful punch from his twin.

The downside of being around those little kids was that they brought up whatever occurred to them.

“If you started taking better care of yourself, your face will become even more pretty,” Hyungwon motioned for him to bend down. Willingly Kihyun did and Hyungwon ruffled Kihyun's hair then started fixing it.  
He laughed again. “Even Hyuk was concerned about you, sheesh. Asking us if you’d been taking your medicine. Say it Kihyunnie, are you sick?”

He closed his eyes. This was becoming painful.

“Can't you see it, Hyungwon? You're hurting him. Leave his hair alone.”

They started bickering again but this time Kihyun didn’t have the heart to interfere.

“Hey, kids,” he began, forcing a smile he hoped neither of them could see its transparency, “as much as I’d like to stay, I really have to leave now.” He pulled both of them in an embrace he poured all his heart into; but still, at that time, all his heart wasn’t enough.

When he let go, Hoseok planted a kiss on his cheek. “If I were older I’d have married you,” he said compassionately and Kihyun knew he meant it; it made his smile less transparent.

“And I’d beat all those bad people making you sad.” Hyungwon added, making a small fist in the air.

Kihyun laughed for their sake then waved goodbye and left.

 

The streets didn’t seem any less lonely. He felt indignant at the association of night and loneliness; he was sick of people glorifying both. Everything could have a negative connotation if it had been tainted with a bad memory, and everything could have the best link to reality if one had a single memory worth remembering.

Like he couldn’t stare at the stars anymore. And whenever he was left alone on the fire-escape at night, he would make sure he had his bottle to stare at.

So lost in thought, so lost in life.

“Don’t you have to study or something?”

Kihyun smiled to himself. He looked up. “Hey, neighbour.”

Changkyun smiled his familiar smile. Kihyun spun around, leaned on the banister using his elbows and casually slipped the bottle into his pocket while looking up at Changkyun whose head just popped out of his small window. “I know it sucks but I can tell you, it gets easier after you graduate.”

Kihyun laughed not so half-heartedly. “How old do you think I am, doc?”

Changkyun grimaced at that. “Still in your teens.”

He laughed loudly at that. “Maybe I should have used less pink in my hair.” The thought was amusing. Changkyun had said teens indicating not only did he think Kihyun was a high-schooler but also failed to play it off smoothly as he usually did and lied about the assumed number.

“Don’t tell me I've been this disrespectful to you and you’re actually older than I am but got a chance to drink from the fountain of youth?” Changkyun faked a gasp and Kihyun thought it was quite endearing. He wondered if Changkyun could see what he saw in Changkyun's smile in someone else. He hoped he did; Changkyun sure deserved it.

“I'm not in my teens and I don’t go to college and I _am_ younger than you.” He teased with a smirk.

Changkyun was only smiling down on him, prompting Kihyun's heart with that smile.

“Say,” Changkyun rested his head on the back of his propped hand, eyeing Kihyun amusedly, “can you weigh a human soul?”

Kihyun didn’t know where this came from but he replied all the same. “Yes.”

Changkyun's grin almost reached his ears. “You know this’s the first time you’ve given me a direct answer.”

He thought back at everything and it was a very valid statement. He shrugged.

“What’s his name?” Changkyun asked. “Your first love.”

He was about to ask him what made him assume he had a first love but Changkyun beat him to it. “Yes I’m assuming, you’re a lousy liar anyways.”

“Hyuk.” He was happy afew seconds ago, now Kihyun wasn’t so sure. “Did you fall in love again after your first heartbreak?”

Changkyun seemed to be weighing his answers. “I’m too focused on you right now to answer that question.”

“Oh yea? What do you see?”

“Art.” He replied simply.

Kihyun smiled at the ground.

“You have a way with words, doc.” He mumbled.

“Well, is there anything that was really not said? It’s the way things are usually put to words that make a world of difference on how they befall us.” Changkyun shrugged. “Words are weapons after all.”

He didn’t comment. But Changkyun was still beaming.

“Are you happy?” Changkyun didn’t sound hesitant regardless of the nature of the question.

“Right now, I am.” Kihyun hadn’t been able to say something like that for years.

He heard Changkyun's melodious laugh. “You’re being dangerously open tonight. I could take advantage of that.”

“Careful, you wouldn’t want to get too attached to me.”

“My cat kinda likes you so I think it’s safe for the owner to get attached as well.”

“Your cat wouldn’t mourn me when I'm gone.” That was a slip.

There was a long pause.

“I don’t intend on simply letting go of you. I've read so many tragic Shakespeare to know what to do.” How he could still speak so lightly was a mystery to Kihyun.

“What if I die? Tomorrow, in a week?” Kihyun cocked an amused eyebrow at him. “Are we going to be called poetry?”

“Hmmm,” Changkyun put on a thoughtful face. “If this were romance, maybe. I mean, you're torn away from your love before getting to see how it ends. You start a story you weren't permitted to end on your own.”

When Kihyun didn’t reply –when all he did was speechlessly stare at Changkyun, the latter opened his lips but sealed them close again. “That bottle you always play with, that’s not for something terminal, right?”

_Of course he would have noticed._

_Of course Minhyuk was right._

Kihyun laughed, pushing his weight forward as he briefly closed his eyes. “Go to sleep, doc, you need it.”

“Wait.” He called out urgently enough Kihyun had to look up at him once again. “Promise me you would tell me if it gets serious.” He bit down on his lower lip. The gesture was fifty-percent concern, fifty-percent a turn on.

“I’m not dying, okay?” Kihyun tried to make it sound less than a snap. Changkyun didn’t seem convinced; so he played it his way. “I promise you I’m not dying.” Kihyun said resignedly.

“Okay then.” Changkyun pressed his lips into a thin line. “I'm inviting myself to breakfast at your place tomorrow.”

Kihyun shrugged.

“Remember this shoulder shrug when you wake up thinking there’s a burglar in your room, kiddo.” He winked, made sure Kihyun laughed then shut down his window.

That night, Yoo Kihyun went to bed with mingled feelings of pain and joy.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well I kept half of my promise, late update but long update u.u


	4. Mistyrose

 

 

Changkyun kept his promise.

Not only was he sitting at Kihyun's table, but he also had C lying at his feet. His eyes kept following Kihyun as the latter yawned and went to the fridge; Changkyun looked propped like a little kid ready for food. Kihyun didn’t know when he started being so careless about who to let invade his space. Changkyun could be a secret cultist who plucked birds’ feathers for fun for all he knew.

But someone who owned a cat couldn’t be mean, right?

“Your hair looks even more like a galaxy when you’d just woken up.” He remarked, drawling with a slow smile. Kihyun's chest tightened at that remark. “It looks just the perfect ratio between disheveled and captivating. A galaxy I said.”

“I can't cook to save my life.” That was the only thing Kihyun said as he gave Changkyun his back, working his way to two bowls and some cereal box.

He laughed heartily, a voice Kihyun could drink in. “You're probably the kind of guys who reply with thanks if they get a love confession.”

This was intriguing. Too bad Kihyun was the one doing the confession so often hence the thought remained in the realm of theory.

As he poured the two of them some milk and cereal –and C some milk-, he realized Changkyun's piercing set of eyes hardly left his face.

“What’s on your mind?” dreading the answer didn’t stop Kihyun from asking.

“I was just thinking how much easier it’d be if I could read your mind.”

Kihyun couldn’t stop blinking at him. He extended his hand across the table, reaching out to Kihyun's.

Yoo Kihyun didn’t flinch.

“You’re cold.”

“It’s November.” If there was any reason he wanted to pull back his hand, it would be the fact Kihyun found it impossible to easily carry out a lie, not while being in the presence of someone whose voice hit all those low notes while addressing him.

“Can I take you somewhere?” Changkyun asked, giving Kihyun the infamous head tilt. “Please agree because I really want to show you something.”

“Only if we walk there.”

That drew a full grin out of Changkyun.

 

It seemed like they were going in circles; Changkyun didn’t seem like he had a place in mind for them to go and they ended up in the park before either of them knew it.

“Red.” Changkyun had said out of nowhere however his eyes were solely fixated on Kihyun.

Kihyun's lips had already formed their answer. “Fire.”

Throughout the history of irrelevant things that could be blurted out, that would undeniably take the cake.

And of course Changkyun started laughing. Kihyun, in turn, found his way to a smile; it made him happy hearing Changkyun laugh.

“Blue?” he proceeded.

In the same pattern Kihyun replied without thinking. “Ocean.”

“White?”

“Dandelion.” He was smiling.

“A dove?” Changkyun didn’t sound as certain about this one.

“Wings.” Kihyun could have never been more certain.

“Paradise?”

“Angels.” Kihyun laughed at this one. “Let me try,” he could see Changkyun's eyes light up under the faint midday sunlight. “Pink.”

“Roses.”

Kihyun bit his lip. “Black.”

“Poetry.”

Kihyun loved this, he loved Changkyun's mentality; he loved his answers. “Grey.”

Changkyun gestured for him to sit down on one of the benches. “Death.”

Kihyun clicked his tongue, deflating the pain filling his air sacs.

He flicked Kihyun's forehead. It seemed like he were desperate to get over his very own last reply. “Seven.”

“It doesn’t fit the pattern.” Kihyun noted.

“Just play along.”

“Sins.”

“I’d have gone for lucky number seven.” He offered simply.

“I'm pretty sure you’d have gone with a whole lot of different things for all your questions.” Kihyun didn’t know how to feel about his statement.

Changkyun got up to his feet despite having sat down only seconds ago; he was drawing something on the ground beneath his feet. “Which sin do you think is the worst?”

Kihyun contemplated for a second. Humans were nothing but those so-called sins mixed together in one vessel, just different proportions. However, he wasn’t sure if his answer should be based on personal preferences or personal prejudices.

“Can I ask you something but please don’t read too much into it?” Kihyun was quite sure that he was rubbing his eyes from a nonexistent mote. He was about to ask the guy who most scared him about a subject that scared most people. “Which sins do you think death evokes?”

He had an explicit idea about the words death evoked, words all-encompassing like ‘always’ and ‘forever’. What was vague was their correlation to what made us human. To our sins. It was death that evoked all the dormant feelings; it was that which exposed the passion and unveiled the pain.

For Kihyun, he found this to be the tricky part. It was declared you had thirty minutes on earth yet to live. You would thereby witness the tears of never having enough time to fulfill a promise, to mend a broken heart, to properly say goodbye, to amend a wrong doing, to appreciate life’s little gifts. You would witness the confessions, those that should have set you free eons ago, the ones that had always been dragging you down. But the consolation was that everyone was inept in their own inadequate way. So all that time spent being angry would seem trivial; all the tears shed for a cause you were fully aware was never worth it would seem insignificant. You just clutch to the remnants of time, hanging on to the arms of the clock, hoping the weight that had always been pinning you down would slow it down albeit imperceptibly. At the face of death you would fanatically be looking for a proof that you had once been alive. That you had once been.

But guess what? Even if eternity lied before you, you would never know what to do with it. There would never be enough time.

_We, human beings, had always been greedy by nature. And forever would never be enough._

“Take all the uncertainties in life, all the undefinable rights and wrongs and try to put them to words.” Changkyun began; his smile seemed to be warring with something untraceable to Kihyun's eyes. “The Kübler-Ross model suggests it’s mainly wrath, but personally speaking I think it has more than just that. You’re either lying on the ground trying to hold your pieces together, struggling with the intangible pain, or you just want more time, denying the inevitable pain.”

Kihyun nodded. “Doc, it seems like neither you nor I can answer a question.”

Changkyun gave him a sympathetic smile. “No, Kihyun, some questions are bigger than to have answers.”

This made Kihyun realize how embittered he had been about his life. It seemed like everything was fencing him in and nothing ever answered any of his questions. His life was written in a lousy book where one got tired of writing halfway because it was hopeless for the plot was just going nowhere; it was doomed. So one simply abandoned it and everything else started to control it, almost hauntingly so. And Yoo Kihyun was trapped in time.

“Greed. Greed is the worst of them all.” Kihyun got up to kick a ball that came his direction back to the group of kids playing before his eyes.

_How carefree._

Changkyun sniggered. It was a new sound to Kihyun's ears. “Usually I’d agree with you but I’m quite certain it’s lust.”

Because in the end, it fell down to perspective.

He walked to Kihyun, slowly reaching out for his cheek –at least that would have been his intention had he not decided against it a centimeter away from the younger’s cheek. And Kihyun could swear he could feel the tip of Changkyun's finger burning against the white of his cheek.

When he looked at Changkyun's face, he hoped the latter was smiling. But he wasn’t. And that was what scared him about Lim Changkyun.

His voice came out like a far-off cry, lost somewhere where the blue ocean bled into the colour-shifting sky. “Try making a rectangle with your hands,”

Kihyun couldn’t yet process. He took long enough that Changkyun had gone behind him and put his hands over Kihyun's, making Kihyun his rectangle in front of his eyes. He focused it on two young children. From Kihyun's angle, they looked nothing like brother and sister. Something their similar features and their parents who sat watching them not so far away suggested.

“If I were to ask what the word ‘family’ or ‘home’ or ‘love’ evokes, each person would sprout a different picture-” His hands were still over Kihyun's. Kihyun might have not known Changkyun for a long time but the guy always drove at something. “-None of them with any substantial link to the real meaning, only manifestations of what-could-be; dreams;” he let go of Kihyun's hands, motioning at something Kihyun should be seeing before his eyes. Changkyun put his hands in his pockets and started pacing till he was standing in front of Kihyun facing the same direction. “And what-I-am-seeing: worse than reality. Are you following?"

Surprisingly, Kihyun was. “Yes. So it all falls down to unrealities and wishful or cynical thinking.”

“Correct.” He confirmed then fell silent for a second as though he were studying something about the siblings who were really more than siblings. “Everything through that rectangle is your perspective. Everything outside those ghostly lines is the world’s.”

Kihyun paid more attention to the small scene. Their familial status weren’t labelled on their clothes, weren’t engraved on their innocent skin; it didn’t matter. Those were labels outside his rectangle. Those two kids were two souls who radiated affection, whatever form their feelings took shape and whatever form their souls took shape.

It didn’t matter.

“I wonder what the unity in those ‘universal’ words is.” There was something very disquiet and almost longing in Changkyun's abysmal tone.

Kihyun instinctively extended his hand till he was tugging at Changkyun's shirt, forcing the latter to give him his attention. “Where did that come from?”  
Ironically enough, Kihyun could have simply answered his very own question, but he had never heard Changkyun hit that level of low-notes; Kihyun thought he never could. And he would be damned if it weren’t very heartbreaking to listen to.

“I was just thinking how we all saw different things while we were all essentially looking at the same thing.”

Kihyun almost smiled.

Look at the sun. Without it, it was utterly dark and you were blinded; look directly at it and you were blinded by the luminous rays. Either ways you couldn’t see.

In that very case, what you weren’t seeing didn’t matter.

“The long face doesn’t suit you.” Kihyun said as he practically pulled Changkyun back next to him. He, himself, wasn’t feeling the little jab but he couldn’t take the heavy atmosphere either, not to mention Changkyun's melancholy.

“Why didn’t you say virtues when I said seven?” Changkyun's low chuckle wasn’t all that genuine. “This could have been much more lighthearted.”

“Because I'm a moron who brought up death.” Kihyun replied, rolling his eyes.

He laughed.

_Much better_.

“You make poetry out of everything.” Changkyun teased.

“I wouldn’t glorify death, so no, not poetry.” Around Changkyun, he felt it was okay to be awkward; and when he felt it was okay to fall down that he didn’t become as conscious and did much better at not falling down.

“Plus, I love red, grey not so much … I prefer red and black together, thank you.” Kihyun said smugly.

Changkyun broke into genuine, uplifting laughter Kihyun had to question if it were credited to a hidden joke.

“So what did you see in your small rectangle?” Kihyun asked.

“I only looked through yours so it’s probably the same thing. I saw love.”

Lim Changkyun was a master of projection. If he were in a concert, he wouldn’t be an instrument, he would be the conductor.

It came out a bit later, after seconds of light silence, but Kihyun's laughter finally found its way out of his mouth.  
  
While they walked back to their block, Changkyun reminded Kihyun of why they had left it in the first place.

“To be honest, I wanted you to show me something,” not only was he titling his head, but also biting his lips. What could be more deadly if mingled with his voice? That Kihyun didn’t know.

He tried not to tense up. After spending the day with Changkyun, he knew how dangerous Changkyun's words could be.

They were standing next to a parked car, Changkyun's hand instinctively and subconsciously shielded Kihyun when he was about to cross to the other side. Almost instantly drawing it back after he made sure Kihyun was safe by his side. Kihyun did see the upcoming car, he just thought he could cross faster. And he probably would have.

“Please don’t be so reckless when crossing the street.”

Changkyun didn’t meet his eyes. Kihyun couldn’t help miss a beat.

He cleared his throat. “So I was saying,” he gave Kihyun a lopsided smile. Then he turned around and started looking at the stars while he talked. On seeing Changkyun's eyes glistening with the tattered moonlight, Kihyun was that close to reaching to his shirt and clenching it; at times he was confident it made him feel better when the pain was unbearable.

But what the heck! Yoo Kihyun was this proximate to a living and a breathing soul. “I wanted to hear you play.”

For a second there Kihyun was looking at Hyuk.

And as Changkyun turned to press a smile he added, “I hope it’s not much to ask.”

He was listening to Hyuk. The wind made it harder not to start tearing up.

He wasn’t sure what Changkyun was seeing, but Kihyun was slowly seeing his smile fade.

“I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Changkyun was saying and Kihyun so desperately wanted to shake his head; so much he wanted Changkyun not to sound this guilty, not to look like that while he had done nothing wrong. “Don’t make that kind of face, I wouldn’t be able not to hug you otherwise.”

He was trying to make Kihyun smile. Lim Changkyun was standing before Kihyun's ugly crying face trying to make him smile.

Changkyun's hands were hesitating before Kihyun's face.

Kihyun only wanted Changkyun to look at him and see the monster.

He wiped his tears with his sleeves. Music was a part he couldn’t show anyone, probably excluding Changkyun from the ‘anyone’ category was crossing an invisible boundary.

“I'm sorry, but I probably can't right now.” He did his best not to choke out the words.

“It’s okay. I already realize it’d take you some time. I was just trying to get you to agree to do it in the near future.”

Kihyun was chuckling. Three seconds ago he was crying and now he was giggling like a little kid. He made a small fist and hit Changkyun on the chest. Once, gently; twice, he was growing more inhibited; thrice, Kihyun was pressing his lips, holding back everything rising in his chest and trying to keep it at bay.

Changkyun did nothing to stop Kihyun's bumping fists, his eyes held yet another shade of compassion. How many shades did grey have? How many shades of black did it need to grow dim?

“Tell me something you would regret having told me in the morning.” Kihyun whispered, still at his rhythmic bumping.

“I think at this point the only I could regret in the morning is letting you go right now.” He whispered back.

What would it take for Kihyun to feel less like a monster and more like a human?

Did he have to stain the white; this was pure, think dandelions, think snowflakes.

“Lim Changkyun, what do you want?” he stopped hitting Changkyun. He leveled his head and looked Changkyun directly in the eyes. Snowflakes weren’t sufficient to describe what Kihyun was seeing.

Changkyun closed his eyes; Kihyun could see his lips spreading into a smile that was quivering at first. “All I want is to make you say ‘ _today is the best day in my life_ ’ every day,”

_There_ is _chaos and randomness in the universe._

“And I want you to _feel_ it.”

Out of all people in the universe, out of all times and dimensions, Kihyun had to meet him now of all times.

Did Changkyun even know how spot on he was back then? Someone whose life the arms of the clocks were robbing it from its breath, shortening its span with each unheard tick. Was he aware of what torrent of emotions his words were making Kihyun undergo?

Kihyun tiptoed to close the slight height-gap between them. He held Changkyun's head between both of his hands and he leaned in, touching Changkyun's forehead with his. Kihyun wasn’t the only one whose eyes were closed.

“Thank you.”

He couldn’t feel Changkyun breathing. He was filled with a rush of gratification, a rush of gratitude and a rush of fear all in the same time. And he was still alive.

He let Changkyun go, pressed one last smile before crossing the street… making sure he took the path to his room alone

 

 

 

 

He had been spending a lot of time over at Changkyun's place recently.

Today, when Kihyun woke up he wasn’t in the same bed –luckily but unsurprisingly. He found Changkyun seated on the couch, dressed to leave. However, it didn’t prevent Kihyun's head from ending up on Changkyun's lap.

“I've been meaning to ask you something.” Kihyun said. It wasn’t something he intended saying at all, neither did he know what he wanted to say; there were a lot of things he wanted to say Kihyun didn’t know from where to start.

Instead, he settled on the most pressing. “You’ve hugged me the other day, why?” He hoped he wasn’t colouring at that. He was technically telling Changkyun that he was reliving an old memory; but he had to know.

“How many reasons are out there?” when he stole a glance at Changkyun, for a second Kihyun thought he were a young boy. Changkyun had looked awkward, clumsy, coy. Nothing like the confident man Kihyun thought him to be. He honestly liked this side better.

“But you’ve not done it again...?” He didn’t want to think.

“Because … because I don’t know.” Changkyun pushed a strand away from Kihyun's eyes. “What’s your story, Yoo Kihyun?” he laughed sheepishly at his own question.

Kihyun smiled at that. “How much time do you have?” The question soon turned him cold on the inside.

“As much as it’d take for you to open up to me. Perhaps even more.”

Lim Changkyun was a smooth talker to an unreasonable extent.

He didn’t believe in miracles, but it took one to have Changkyun still ignorant of Kihyun's past.

“I’ve not really been a good person. I've plenty of regrets and almost no time to amend.” Kihyun was getting more used to opening up to him.

And the reason he hated the way Changkyun looked at him was because he felt exposed. Kihyun lived most of his life afraid of getting close to people, but there he was. It looked like Changkyun was seeing something else in Kihyun; something Kihyun failed to see. And that alone scared him to heights he couldn’t express.

“That person you loved while you were in highschool, suppose they became screwed… how would it feel, how would you feel knowing fully well you were the reason they turned out that way? That you being careless and them getting broken is all your fault, how could you live with that?”

“Then they weren’t the right person.” Changkyun said simply.

He scoffed; this hardly qualified as an answer.

“Just what do you think love is?” It was an indignant question triggered by the cynicism Changkyun's very words evoked.

“I don't know what it is. But I know the common misconception.” Changkyun started, giggling. He once again pushed another fallen strand away from Kihyun's eyes. “Love isn’t thinking two hearts are capable of becoming one. That you can merge yours with theirs and alas, you have a new, more solid, much stronger and a better heart…”

Kihyun felt like he could melt.

“But in the end they’re two different hearts belonging to two independent bodies, entities that had always been adequate on their own...” he trailed off; this wasn’t the end of it.

Kihyun blamed himself for years during those lonely creeping nights for what he was about to voice. “Adequate enough that they’re needless of such a ‘hinder’?” he asked. He hoped Changkyun would rebuff that; he hoped Changkyun didn’t think that the two hearts could never become better –that if anything, they could only bring each other to their own destruction. He hoped Changkyun had hope.

Before he got his answer, he heard Changkyun's phone ringing. He didn’t know how he felt about it always interrupting them at times like this. Did his dread of finding an answer outweigh his fear of the nature of the answer?

Changkyun's expression was radically changing as he stared at his phone’s screen. Kihyun didn’t let him excuse himself; for he was the one who got up and left.

The more he tried to run away, the more exigent his thoughts became.

  
What triggered the thoughts?

Kihyun never feel so detached yet so at one as when he played the piano. When he started playing, he didn’t want to stop. He already lived in his head with his melodies and buried feelings that were always rimmed with melancholy. Melancholy, yes that was what everything boiled down to. It was one of Kihyun's favourite words; it spoke to him, reached out to him and justified a lot of unravelling that made no sense. At least he was happy with the illusion of a justification it offered.

Could one simultaneously look at two parallel lines of their life?

Yoo Kihyun was looking at three.

Through the narrow window in the studio, he could see a relatively hidden crescent moon. Through the reflection on the glass caused by the darkness that consumed the night, he could see the piano. And in his hand, he stared up at the moonlight then at its light shed on his small plastic bottle.

No matter how many people you had around you, no matter how many people you loved or loved you back, you couldn’t escape the emptiness. There would always be that time at night where you couldn’t help the tears, when you were faced with how everything went and led to that moment.

There was a reason people kept their private feelings to themselves, chief of which, failing to put these personal feelings into words lest not doing them justice would render them invalid, would sap them of their credibility and one of their validity. Having been cocooned in multiple layers of second skins, you peel them off along the way, accidentally tearing a part of yourself; perhaps even the real you in the way. But you never noticed back then because you had no reason to look back at what you had left behind. For all you knew, ‘behind’ connoted ‘needless pain’ which you decided to relinquish.

That was when you truly become undone.

_‘Everyone is alone; everyone is empty; every relation is dispensable_.’ People didn’t want to open up because hardly anyone wanted to get better. They were afraid to feel too much for no one had ever cherished their feelings; no one had ever appreciated this little rawness of their soul.

And they doomed every relation before it started, their life before it was lived. They were always living the worst-case scenario in their mind that they grew oblivious to the one they currently had; or what they should have had before their heart became marred with mistakes they had no choice in –before they had been scarred.

And he had enough scars as it was. And everything scared the life out of him.

_Ha._

They said knowing where the problem lied, you could fix it. But for Kihyun, knowing where the problem lied helped him avoid facing it, escape it all the more.

What did he want? Why was he born, why was he still alive?

He looked at the stars, they never reshaped and proposed an answer. He looked at the sun and its rays were never irradiating enough to shine upon an answer. He looked at the moon and it always shied away, fading before it could give him an answer. He had always been deprived of answers to the questions that mattered.

The best way to avoid all the pain was to not feel at all, to dull everything that nothing remained.

Kihyun could hardly tell reality apart from the unconscious world. Did it even matter? He felt dead in both worlds.

On his way back from the studio, he bumped into a man that looked like bad news. He was so far away; he didn’t care about a thing. He couldn’t register any pain as he was being hit, he couldn’t feel the blood on his plastic skin; he couldn’t feel the cold pavement as his body met it. Kihyun felt nothing. If pain was all he could feel, then he would keep on trying to feel more pain until he could feel something else.

Was this pain even real?

On his way back from the studio, he wished there were a soul in this immense universe that could call out to him, that could tell him something –anything worthwhile.

  
The thing about life was that you were not supposed to look at the cup you were holding as you walked, otherwise you would drop it.  Venturing a look beneath you while crossing a bridge not only jeopardized your physical balance but also your mental one; it put you at the risk of an agonizing fall. Because it all came down to this: knowing how much you had got to lose made you err all the more.

He was on the ledge. And he had to look down because it was impossible to ignore that voice.

Why was Changkyun appearing before his eyes? Why did he look so riled up? His voice sounded livid, it was hitched; as if it were in a dilemma as to whether go into a rage-fit or a crying-fit. He couldn’t make out the surroundings; was this the foot of the fire-escape? There was no one else but the two of them. Changkyun was angry at him.

“You’re a blundering idiot.” He was shouting.

Kihyun could feel himself responding; he could tell he was responding. He just couldn’t make out the words coming out from his mouth.

 “Look at me.” Changkyun was trying in a calmer tone. “Look at me, goddammit.” Kihyun felt weightless, Changkyun was lifting him off the ground by his collar. It seemed like there were a rampant tornado in his eyes. “What is it that’s scaring you so much? Is _this_ your worst fear?”

He couldn’t see anything in Changkyun's hands, but he could tell he was alluding to his plastic bottle.

Kihyun closed his eyes. “It’s not a worst fear if you're living it. Not anymore.”

In the still night came a piercing cry, a frustrated outburst. Kihyun daren’t open his eyes; he knew it was Changkyun. Maybe he was breaking Changkyun the way he broke Hyuk years ago.

“I don’t get it, you were fine. Why does it feel like each time I take a step towards you, you take two back? That you become more reserved?”

It was a hollow snorting laugh that came out of his mouth. “I’ve been disappointed over and over. I think it’s okay to be this reserved.”

He couldn’t point out any of the feelings that crossed Changkyun's face. It was a spectrum of various shades. He was trying to detect a note he had never heard.

He only heard Changkyun's question loud and clear. “What do you want?”

He could hear himself laugh. He didn’t want anything; it was impossible. “Nothing. Everything. A miracle.”

He could see Changkyun's clam shut in pain; he could feel Changkyun's grip grow less tight on his shirt. Why was he even in this situation, why couldn’t he remember? Did Changkyun witness one of his episodes? Kihyun knew this was real, this was happening.

“Why are you throwing away your life? Why are you so blind to everything that matters?” he could easily hear the desperation crawling into Changkyun's voice.

“I'm just living my life.” He could feel a smile spreading across his very own face, a smile he hated more than anything else in the world.

He could see Changkyun turning and giving him his back. He could see Changkyun hold his head frantically. He could see him spin around again and march the distance till he was once again standing too close to him; he could see Changkyun's hands bang next to his head on the concrete wall.

“There is a difference between living your life and slowly shortening it.”

That made him laugh so hard for so long that Changkyun had to back away, clutching to his hair. Kihyun could finally see now. Kihyun could finally understand.

He was here because once again, Changkyun had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was here because he had to run into Changkyun; he had to drag Changkyun to this alley. Because he couldn’t rebuff the fact he had been sleeping around; he couldn’t lie about his split lie –he couldn’t explain why he was standing on the ledge. He couldn’t feel sorry for throwing everything away even when Changkyun begged him to hold on.

“I'm angry.” Kihyun gave a low laugh. “I'm angry.” He shouted and kicked the trash-bin and screamed as loud as he could. “I'm sick of how unfair everything is. I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of having no one there for me. I'm tired of disappointments. Throughout my life, I had been waiting for someone to pick me up. From the orphanage where I lived, from the abyss where I sank, from the pain where I overstayed my visit. I'm just sick of waiting. This time I write how it ends. This time, I will decide how to play. I'm following my own set of rules and I don’t care about the consequences. You wanna know why?”

He had been closing the gap between them as he raged on and Changkyun had been backing away till he had hit the wall.

“Because that day, you forgot to ask about the words that mattered. When you say darkness, I hear refuge. When you say pain, I hear relief. And when you say love, I hear misery. I don’t want anything from this life.” He was heaving. The terror in Changkyun's eyes was palpable. Changkyun had slipped against the wall, his eyes wide open at what he was seeing. Changkyun was finally seeing Kihyun for what he was: a monster.

Kihyun was feeling too much all in the same time. He was relieved, he was feeling more pain; he was happy, he was going to cry; he wanted Changkyun to walk away, he wanted Changkyun to hug him; he wanted to stay forever, he wanted to perish and for no ashes to remain.

Kihyun fell to his knees, looking straight forward, at the void that he was seeing –that he was feeling.

“I feel none of this.”

Anger that led to tears and tears that led to anger. These two were interchangeable for a reason. Those two raw emotions that acted like a truth serum, that when you didn’t understand what was wrong, your pain started sending signals everywhere that this place hurt. You felt suffocated, that it was impossible to breathe and feel at the same time because it insanely hurt to do both simultaneously. You couldn’t talk because the lump in your throat was real and it had to restrain you from saying too much. The tears blocked your vision because what you were feeling was too overwhelming to consider conceiving more by perceiving anything that lied outside your empty vessel.

He was hurting. That was the only way to put it.

He was at loss of words that the mere simplicity of the word ‘sad’ should be equally expressive as to how much gloom had descended upon him and taken over his heart.

Kihyun focused forward, on the tears frozen in his glands –on not seeing the delicate changes occurring to the sculptures of Changkyun's face.

“There’s this harrowing pain I feel whenever you walk away,” it came out emptier than Kihyun had intended, He was for once in his life addressing a problem instead of running away from it. “I just dreamt that, you know- actually, there's been that thing I always felt around you. You're like that vivid dream you get at night but you struggle to remember the following day, as though you were never real. You fill me up with the void, a den of emotional disappointment for some reason –you strain me just as much.” Kihyun's voice was getting lower and lower, and by the end of the sentence, it had cracked and dissipated into something tinier than those speck of dust fading into oblivion.

It hurt that he was letting his hopes cast their shadow in a range wide enough to include Changkyun. It hurt to think he was the only one who cared about this human relation. It hurt to realize how unfair he was being.

Changkyun was pulling him closer. Again, he was holding Kihyun the way he did weeks ago. He was muttering something –something Kihyun thought was too perfect to be said to him. Changkyun wasn’t apologizing … he wasn’t apologizing.

“You should learn to walk away from the things you don’t need. And you don’t need this pain. You can live without pain.” He had whispered into Kihyun's ear.

“Could you hear this heart beating?” He was still whispering, so silky and so sweet. He took a more confidential tone; Kihyun could feel Changkyun's lip peripherally brushing his ear as he spoke. “That’s yours and mine beating to indicate we’re both alive, Kihyun. You’re real. I'm real, I’m here.”

Kihyun didn’t break away. Changkyun was warm; Kihyun wanted this halo of an angel to enfold him. He wanted Changkyun to wash away the pain emanating from his flesh. He felt for every drop in his shallow pool of emotions existed a counterpart of a deeper shade so bottomless that the immiscibility within him could hardly conceive. When Kihyun broke away, he had silently crawled back until his back was glued to the wall, his eyes were focused on the distance he had crafted.

“It doesn’t make sense.” Kihyun's voice choked towards the end.

He could feel Changkyun's head on his shoulder; he could hear Changkyun sigh. “Maybe we should just accept the fact that some things don't make sense on their own. You just have to piece the little shreds together till they batch up to make their big picture.”

Mournfully, Kihyun nodded.

“You know, when I first moved in, I had ran into you in the street and your eyes instantly caught my attention. There was something very haunting about them.” Changkyun paused, pulling a deep breath. “You had that look, it made me shiver to my very core.”

When Kihyun eyed him sideways, he realized Changkyun had been looking at him all along.

“That bitter smile was what made your eyes worse, Kihyun. You looked like someone who everyone tossed away after they got what they wanted from.”

“You mean after they had fucked.” Kihyun stated, not unbitterly.

Changkyun didn’t reply for a long while. “I just wish you didn’t think so lowly of yourself.”

He scoffed derisive laugh. “Walk around in my skin and try to think like that. I opened my eyes to this world to realize even my parents didn’t want me. As I said, I've had enough disappointments in life.”

He didn’t say anything. This was exactly what Kihyun wanted. He wanted Changkyun to be around him and not assuage him with false words –with promises he couldn’t keep. Kihyun wanted him to just be there.

“Thanks for being here tonight.”

 “I-” Changkyun began but Kihyun shook his head for he wanted to talk to him; Changkyun's mere presence alleviated his pain.

“You know, when you’re gone I'm going to be in so much pain I can't even begin to describe it,” he clenched to his T-shirt, already getting a small taste of that poisonous pain.

“You don’t have to worry about that. I'm not going anywhere any time soon.” And once again Kihyun felt the weight of Changkyun's head on his shoulder. He felt the weight of Changkyun's promise on his shoulders.

He cracked a smile, looking forward, particularly at the nothingness. He was glad he couldn’t see Changkyun's face; Kihyun was still paralyzed to his core by Changkyun's reply.

And the silence dragged on till Changkyun broke away, gave a small laugh and shook his head.

“I mean, someone has to call out to you before you jump.” He laughed. It didn’t sound strained but when Kihyun glanced at him from the corner of his eye, he could see Changkyun himself saw no humour in the words.

“I wasn’t going to jump, you know.” It was the truth. “I just feel so liberated there.”

“I'm glad to hear that. I’ll hold you to that promise.” Changkyun was smiling. “I don't know how I’d have lived with myself had you not heard me.”

It was Kihyun's turn to smile. “I'm assuming at this point it would take more than just some words to creep you out, so I’ll just say this. You know this back note one heard in a time of need and he felt like it had always been calling out to him except he couldn’t hear it in spite of how loud everything around him was?” Kihyun was asking without making eye-contact; the statement itself was personal enough.

When he didn’t reply, Kihyun realized Changkyun wanted him to look at him. When Kihyun turned to him, Changkyun was biting his lip, holding back a playful smile. And when he met Changkyun’s eyes, the latter blinked as though he were nodding.

“Tonight, doc, you were like that note for me.”

He couldn’t let Changkyun in on more. He couldn’t tell him that this note now could perfectly touch his soul, land perfect hits on his yearning heart. And no matter what, if he decided he wanted to hear it again, he would mute everything else but that one tone and will himself to get lost in it.  Changkyun had already entered his threshold of perception.

They sat down, revived by the cool wind, listening to the night for a few beats.

“I had only left the orphanage about four years ago. My father, he was a kind man-”

Heads on shoulders, hands reassuring, legs brushing, tone soothing. They didn’t move.

That night, without planning to, Kihyun had told Changkyun about everything. He told him about how his foster-father had left him the studio. He told him about how he had loved him, how empty he felt after his death. He told him about the twins, about how they meant the world to him. He told him about how he couldn’t finish his piece, about how something was missing.

He didn’t talk about Hyuk and Changkyun didn’t bring it up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol guys sorry for the mistakes this's by far not proofread even worse than my 'normal' proofread, I don't mind pointing out the mistake (you'd be doing me a favour actually)  
> it's late, I've early class and I'm tired but I'm also committed -I know fuck my logic lol  
> anyhoe, hope you liked it xx


	5. Firebrick

 

 

People set their defaults wrong. You teach a kid he should seek his happiness, he should avoid pain, and somewhere along the way, he had forgotten that having one necessarily meant he should experience its painful equivalent: the other face of the coin.

And Yoo Kihyun had mostly been experiencing pain.

Being a master of avoiding people, he became acquainted with almost every abandoned area in town. He hadn’t treaded down the path for a while. However, he couldn’t help disappoint himself, ending up in front of the ferry-wheel in the old park. He couldn’t help the irony. The place that held so many good memories not only had been tainted with the relic of an old lover, but also had been abandoned. Kihyun threw a glance at what used to be the pool for water-bumper-cars, faintly hearing Hyuk laugh at the back of his mind. Faintly hearing his own laugh mingling with Hyuk’s.

Now the pool was just empty.

Everything Kihyun had ever been associated with tended to wither and die.

Ignoring the pain in his chest, ignoring the loud creaking protest of the rusty metal threatening to break at any moment, he climbed till he had reached the summit cabin. And through the dust-covered glass of the cabin, he could see the fading crimson rays shading the sky which was bidding dusk goodbye.

Nothing had changed but the height. It wasn’t his perspective; it was the fare to growing up. That was how much you paid for something you never wanted. And there Kihyun thought pain was the only thing that came free in life.

Having that bird-eye view filled him with an array of mixed feelings he knew he wanted none of them to reign. Having any of them as the alpha-feeling negated the confusion; it usually ended up morphing into pain.

A day he had always been looking forward to, planning on to make it perfect, had been nothing but a bitter reminder for the fourth year now. He turned around in the cabin, feeling the bluff of falling.

Every corner had a fragment of a memory, some worse than the others. Sometimes a bitter breakup was the best solution, urging you to move on because you were given every reason to. But when you were left with good memories, they held you back. Sometimes they were the only warm thing. And Kihyun could feel them encircling him, hugging him. Then the sweet memories would start becoming dangerously sweet, dangerously warm. And he would feel them snaking around his neck; that was when he couldn’t breathe.

He climbed down; he didn’t want to be there. It was never his destination, just a casual drop-by because it was hard to resist the temptation.

He started walking.

_‘Do you think we’ll be together forever?’_

_‘Eh, what gives, why are you being so somber now, Kwihyoni?’_

It started getting darker.

_‘I don't know, it just hit me.’_

_‘I'm not planning on leaving you.’_

_‘Is that a promise you can really keep?’_

He started running.

_‘Even if days separate us, I need you to know that you’re the one person I love more than myself and nothing could ever change that.’_

And he kept running and running and running. Even the people he was leaving behind as he ran were people who didn’t care.

And he finally reached his stop. Breathless and with aching bones. A resigned soul and a heart too tired to properly function.

He was at the cliff above the sea.

Kihyun sauntered till he reached the end of the cliff. His eyes wandered, trying to reach as far as they could. It was just him and the turbulent waves. Involuntarily, he started laughing. He kept at it for so long till he had collapsed on his knees, covering his face and clenching to his shirt. He was the definition of pathetic; he was a walking cliché who refused to do anything about his life. More like couldn’t.

Yoo Kihyun used to think he could never let go of his pain. He never thought he could have the courage to endanger his heart emotions-wise ever again. Now that he was compromising the notion, it occurred to him that just because a fallen angel had graced his life, it didn’t mean his feathery wings were capable of saving him from his past sins –that the sorrow would be washed off his skin, erasing all his scars.

He thought he had known nearly everything there to be known about pain. Conceited enough, he had treated it as though it were a person who was formerly a riddle to him but now was an open book. But Kihyun was proven wrong; he could never ever reach the finish-line with pain. It would ever keep growing, oscillating and expanding, having more dimensions and it would forever consume his being until he had ceased to exist. It came manifested in all forms, aiming at his cracks and meticulously directing its hits to his injured areas, accentuating his old scars; and his worst enemy was always the memories. Memories didn’t care. They would strike at any given moment, invulnerable and chockfull of power they filled your ribs, regardless of the presence of any valid trigger. Because eventually everything could become a trigger lest you wanted it not to. They would come crashing into your ribs, gradually cracking them under the throttling pressure and seeping through until the puny fortress was infiltrated by the merciless waves and you couldn’t breathe. That was when the unbearable pain of missing someone peaked and became the embodiment of physically missing a piece of your heart. It didn’t matter what or who Kihyun missed, because in essence, it was himself whom he missed the most –the pre-broken version of him.

It always left him achingly wondering. If places were switched between Hyuk and Changkyun, would it have turned out the same; would he have turned out the same?

Years ago, Yoo Kihyun had given up a part of his heart to find release. On a literal basis.

Yet, he still so adamantly walked the path of self-destruct with unfaltering steps, as though it were the one thing he was born knowing: how to destroy himself and drag those he cared about with him into that dark bottomless pit.

Kihyun visited his pain because one could never forget their manners, could they?

_I need you._

It didn’t take long before a tear started trickling down his cheek, soon to be followed by so many other.

Kihyun's hand rose to his chest and started pulling his jacket tighter around him, dealing with the worst kind of pain; the one his eyes couldn’t see. His mouth gave out a breathless sob.

_I need you so bad._

It took him a fair three dead-ends before he felt he was adequate enough to answer his phone.

He didn’t have to say anything.

“Where are you?”

Kihyun tried to smile which, albeit his lips were quivering, succeeded in holding the tears back.

“Kihyun, where are you?” Changkyun's voice had an edge to it.

“In between.”

There were a few beats of silence.

“I'm scared.” Kihyun disclosed.

There was no reason to add an object. It didn’t matter what one was scared of just as much as the fact that they were scared mattered. And for all its worth, Kihyun was scared of a lot of things.

“I know you are,” he could hear Changkyun's breathing at the other end of the line. “I'm scared too and I need to be with you right now.”

Kihyun smiled and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I need you, Kihyun.” Changkyun finalized, a genuine sense of a honeyed voice.

Kihyun hadn’t the ghost of a notion how long they both kept silent; Changkyun awaiting an answer, and Kihyun trying to let Changkyun's far-away breath swallow him whole.

It started to rain. He couldn’t help but wonder what made the clouds so angry. And at seeing the lightening, at hearing the body-shaking thunder, he knew it must have been one hard collision.

With a painfully throbbing heart and through painfully bitten lips, he voiced, “How many fates do you think one has?”

“Too many. But sadly, never enough.” Changkyun replied, steadily, with conviction. Why did he always have to have the answer to everything?

“I feel pathetic,” he gulped, offering some lucidity to his voice. “I feel like I could never advance forward and that every time I think I've made some progress, albeit a small one, I’ve to ruin everything and go back to square one.” He wasn’t quite finished and somehow Changkyun knew.

And he waited.

“I feel like I could never get out of this prison. Sometimes I think I don’t deserve to get out of it.” Kihyun's voice hitched.

“Listen, I didn’t want to do this over the phone,” Changkyun started, and Kihyun was already clinging to his voice. It was sustaining him and he knew for a fact his life was hinged on that voice. “But I have no other choice. I can tell you’ve been through a lot of shit on the course of your life. I can see you're disapproving of a lot of things around you. But the past doesn’t dictate the present. You're here, the past is behind. Abandon it. It doesn’t deserve a second chance. It doesn’t deserve a second more of your attention.”

_‘Snap out of it, you're only making people suffer. I've given you my all why do you keep refusing to get better?’_

Kihyun swallowed hard, closing his eyes, trying to lock the memories away. That was the bane of his misery; he had been dealing with his past for too long that it had become a part of him.

_‘What's so special about you anyway? You’ve been doing nothing but being pathetic and waiting for everyone to coddle you. Wake up, Kihyun, you're not a kid anymore.’_

 “Yes, there are times when you think that’s it, that you're at the end of your rope, but the fact that you remember those moments is enough of a significance of how strong you are-”

_‘I wish I could erase the past years from my memory. They mean nothing to me.’_

Kihyun tried to breathe but all he did was shut his eyes more tightly.

“-You think you can't take anymore. You think you can't move forward but you do.” Changkyun went silent for a second. “You can be as strong as you want, but sometimes a single word matters. Having someone out there for you to tell you that you can do it, that you're strong and that they admire you is enough to keep you hanging on.”

_‘I can't take it anymore, you're so selfish and I can't take it. This is too much.’_

Kihyun wanted to scream.

And he knew for a fact that Changkyun truly knew how to reach out to him.

He was completely soaked.

_Why wouldn’t this rain ever cleanse me?_

“So, tell me, what are you going to do right now?” Changkyun asked.

_‘I'm sorry. Oh my god, Kihyun, I'm sorry. I really didn’t mean any of this…’_

“I-” Kihyun wiped a raindrop away from his face. “I'm trying to let your words let me out.”

He could hear Changkyun smiling, the I-feel-your-pain smile.

“I wish so much I had been there for you back then,” Changkyun said and Kihyun's eyes flickered open, “you’ve no idea how much it hurts me thinking I could have prevented you from undergoing all this pain. But I swear to God, Kihyun, I'm trying … I just need you to keep holding on. You’ve been doing perfectly fine.”

“That’s what I thought too.” Kihyun said flatly as it was the only thing he could manage.

“Kihyun, can you grant me a simple wish?” when Kihyun didn’t reply, Changkyun carried on with his request. Kihyun was already dreading the worst. “Would you not lose control ever again until we’re together and we’ll go out of control together?”

At that, Kihyun’s mind went blank.

“I thought you had your shit together.” It barely came out a whisper.

Changkyun laughed; it seemed less strained, still lullabies to his ears. “Not all the time.” A pause and when he spoke again, the slowness was mainly light teasing. “I can teach you how to really lose control if you're interested.”

Unable to bear any more pain, Kihyun's face crumpled, eyes squeezing tight as he listened to Changkyun's breath over the phone.

“I need to go.” Kihyun said and he hung up.

_Did it mean anything for the sea to have accumulated all those raindrops? Was it even aware of having carried them?_

_Or is it too egotistical like the me that broke Hyuk that it thought they were insignificant?_

Kihyun stood up, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, aware of the wind’s ability to simply push him around.

_‘What, you don’t believe me?’_

_‘Stop it, Hyuk.’_

_‘Okay then. I'm going to prove to you that I love you more than my own life.’_

Kihyun texted Changkyun then laid his phone next to his feet, muting out the persistent ringing that followed.

He started taking a few steps backwards; he could feel himself smiling.

_‘I love you!!!’_

_‘Are you crazy? It must be freezing down there! Your heart could have stopped before you even reached the waters.’_

The next thing Kihyun knew, he was doing what Hyuk had done years ago but for not-quite-so-different reasons.

This was how it went.  Midair he was choking on air, liberation amid pain, a numbing awareness of the free fall and the beguiling excitement of his adrenalized brain tampering with his sanity. And he was falling headfirst; he was bound to crash.

Mid-sea, he was choking on water.

It was cold. But Kihyun never intended to stay down there for long; all along he never intended to take his life.

But being beneath the surface seemed like the perfect ending.

His heart wouldn’t cease beating so arrhythmically.

Yet, he resurfaced, almost to be drowned by a crashing wave. Miraculously, Kihyun avoided getting swallowed. And it seemed like the longest journey he had ever embarked on was that to the shore.

Shivering, he lied on his back. The rain felt warm on his skin.

He only stared at the sky. Unaware of time passing, he must have dozed off.

 

“You must really be crazy.” It was a firm statement said by one sonorous voice. Kihyun fluttered his eyes open and he could see Changkyun looming over him. It had stopped raining albeit it was still dark. “What were you thinking?”

“I was losing control.” He cracked a smile.

At least Kihyun could smile, even though he failed to find an answer to Changkyun's former question.

Changkyun shook his head, helped him sit up, not-so-gently upbraiding Kihyun and waiting for him to be focused enough to be able to stand on his own two feet. Kihyun was still freezing regardless of the heavy coat Changkyun had handed him not so long ago.

“Does it feel better now?” Changkyun cocked an eyebrow, crossing his arms.

Despite Changkyun's tone, he answered. “Honestly, it did. I feel better.”

As Changkyun stared down at him with that incredulous expression of his. The fact that Changkyun was actually there hit Kihyun at last.

“Sorry to have caused you trouble.” His nose was running down and he could already feel the consequences of his actions slapping him on the face; or as it was in Kihyun's case, on the lungs.

“Shut up.” He said and helped Kihyun up.

Kihyun couldn’t help his smile as Changkyun propped Kihyun's head on his shoulder, as his arms circled around Kihyun's own set of shoulders.

“Let’s take you home, idiot.”

_Because, Changkyun, I had fallen headfirst._

 

  

 

Changkyun's room always smelt pleasantly. It smelt of life.

Kihyun was examining a book from Changkyun's collection while the latter lied on bed, watching him.

“Do you like fictional novels?” Kihyun asked because the book in his hands was the only fictional book on the shelf.

“I'm usually a fan of how things are written, not the story.” He heard Changkyun's reply come from behind. “It’s kind of special to me.”

He was still reading a passage from a page that looked more worn out than most to Kihyun's experienced eyes. “What is it about that book that made it so special for you? I mean, you said it yourself, the way things are usually put to words make a world of difference on how they befall us.”

Changkyun laughed and Kihyun didn’t yet turn; he was giving Changkyun some privacy his question was bound to deprive him of.

“That’s a word-for-word quotation, you’re good.”

Kihyun shrugged. He could hear Changkyun shifting on the bed.

“Maybe it’s about their depth, determining how deep they reach into your soul. Or maybe it was about the timing, about how they made you keep holding on when you were about to throw in the towel. Because, ultimately, nothing has never been said before. And when it’s something too personal, something you had to put down that book for and remember just to breathe because it struck a nerve, because it was something the ‘harsh’ part of you always tried to force-feed you and therefore you rejected the thought.”

Kihyun had turned to Changkyun, book still opened in hands. And Kihyun was awe-struck, stupidly blinking at him.

Changkyun smiled and looked away, muttering something under his breath that Kihyun could swear went along the lines ‘ _Or maybe it’s just how weak I am to that person._ ’

His honesty was inspiring. That was all Kihyun could think of. He gave Changkyun his back so he wouldn’t have to be so careful about his expression. How could someone make you feel like they were so whole yet so incomplete?

“Do you think first love lasts a life time?” Changkyun asked out of nowhere.

Kihyun almost dropped the book. The question addressed so many aspects with so many variables and unknowns to one of the hardest equations ever proposed.

“Don’t you think you could be more specific?” he closed the book and leaned on the wall, looking at Changkyun just as intently. “Are they a memory now, is it a good one? Do you still feel the same, are they _the one_? Do you love them passionately and truly enough?”

That started Changkyun laughing. Kihyun was dumbfounded but at the sound of Changkyun's melodious laugh, he couldn’t help his smile.

“Aren’t you quite the cynic?” Changkyun said and from his lips it sounded affectionate. Kihyun tried not to feel bitter about that. “What about _you_?” he gave each word equal emphasis.

Kihyun could feel his heart in his stomach. “I don't know.” He said and instantly looked away.

He heard the bed make a small noise; he could feel Changkyun's feet against the same wooden floor his bare feet stood on. Changkyun hadn’t stopped until he was in front of Kihyun's face, holding the latter’s face up and forcing Kihyun to look at him.

“I told you, you’re a lousy liar.”

But what about Yoo Kihyun? He didn’t want to fall in love with someone who was still holding on to an old love –true love.

_Because no matter how much they loved me, they could never reach that extent of love…_

Because only firsts were sublimes; even if they never lasted.

He slapped away Changkyun's hand not-so-gently and smirked himself. “I _don’t_ know.” He emphasized. “If you're asking me whether I _would_ fall for someone who is still holding on to old love, then I don’t know if I _would_.”

Changkyun was laughing as he passed Kihyun by and to his couch.

“Sometimes I think you’re one of the stupidest people out there.” Kihyun mumble half-fiercely.

“Watch it. I'm still older.” Changkyun gave him a playful wink punctuated by a lip-bite. “And not to burst your bubble but I don’t really like taking criticism from The Most Dense Person in the world.”

Slightly confused, Kihyun raised him a daring eyebrow and was instantly sitting next to Changkyun on the couch. “Seriously tho, you are. What's with everyone? They regard love as if it were travel plans or something. As if it were done with intentions, as though it were something you went out seeking instead of it slamming you on the face hard and stingy when you least expect it.” He was too caught up in his passionate demonstration to note Changkyun's agape mouth. “Of course you're going to fall in love if you keep saying _I_ _never planned on falling for anyone_. Pardon me, but who are you shitting?”

Kihyun would probably die and not unravel the mystery of the constantly laughing Lim Changkyun.

“Wow, I wouldn’t have taken you to be this undisciplined.”

Dramatically, Kihyun rolled his eyes.

Changkyun sighed. It sounded both: dreamy and dramatic.

“I think falling for someone cherishing their first love is harder for me.” Changkyun began in a relatively more serious tone. “Because I can't see it. I’m not up against a real person. I’m competing against figments of memory that can't quite abandon the person I love yet.”

So much Kihyun wished he hadn’t looked at Changkyun’s face that instant. So much he wished he hadn’t seen the desolate look –of pure obsolescence look in his eyes. So much he wished he hadn’t heard the burned-out tonality that haunted his voice.

In one quick motion, Changkyun had turned around to fully face Kihyun, his eyes spoke of mischief and his eyes had an unspoken challenge.

With exaggeration, he spoke, “But which question reverberated deep in your bones?” it was teasing. He was narrowing the distance between both of their bodies and probably being amused at how intimidated Kihyun's face looked by the suddenness of the situation. “Which tune did it play when it struck high up on your nerves?” Changkyun's fingertips made peripheral contact with Kihyun's shoulder, then chin and finally forehead, as though it was a musical ladder embodying his question.

To avoid answering this question, Kihyun gave him an earnest smile then lifted his legs off the ground and with a small spin, his head was successfully nestled in Changkyun’s lap.

After being around Changkyun long enough, Kihyun realized there was a peculiarly calming sound to his smile.

He heard the sound of the main door being opened then shut. Seemingly, Changkyun was expecting company and just like that Kihyun's eyes darted to the door.

He didn’t know what he expected, but a young lady with that looks that was so out of place wasn’t something Kihyun would have considered.

She was young, probably younger than he was. Silky long black hair that was tied in a high ponytail, snowy jeans and a coffee-brown jacket with a contrasting red scarf. He could see her cheeks pinched red with the cold. The thing about her eyes wasn’t their hazel shape or colour, but the fact they were bloodshot and almost announcing she was crying. She had two paper cups of coffee in her hands.

Did Changkyun tense up or he just happened to shift under Kihyun's weight? Kihyun could never tell.

“Maybe it’s not a really good time.” She said and Kihyun could swear her cheeks got redder, already turning on her heels.

Kihyun slowly sat up. He could feel Changkyun's eyes on him, hesitant and calculating.

“I'm about to-” He was going to leave but Changkyun's hands pulled him down into a sitting position next to him on the couch.

“Yeri, this’s Kihyun, my neighbour. Kihyun, Yeri, my cousin.” He did the formal introduction. The girl bowed her head awkwardly and Kihyun gave slight bow.

“Seriously, I should leave.” Kihyun said in a low voice that only Changkyun could hear.

“Please, stay,” his lips quivered ever so slightly. “It’ll be easier for me this way.”

She took a seat; the air was still dense. During the whole conversation, Changkyun's smile didn’t reach his eyes. The girl looked harmless; she was polite and friendly.

“So my mom would like you to attend, Changkyun-oppa.” She concluded with her best effort at a smile that wouldn’t crack.

“Just your mom?” he said. Kihyun was sure it wasn’t a tease; the comment itself was rude. But Changkyun laughed it off and she soon joined him, awkwardly enough.

Changkyun promised he would try to be there and bid her goodbye. When Changkyun shut the door behind her, Kihyun could see tears materializing in his eyes. He immediately looked away, pretending not to have seen them.

Kihyun couldn’t blame her. After all, it wasn’t hard to imagine what Yeri was seeing when she looked at Changkyun.

Changkyun laughed half-heartedly and with a smooth move he wiped away his tears before they fell down. “Do you ever feel obliged to be nice to someone?”

He would have fixed Changkyun with a hard stare at that question. “Is it really that burdening to have someone being nice to you?” Kihyun couldn’t say he was all that happy about Changkyun’s slightly different attitude towards her.

He laughed a small laugh and straddled the seat in front of Kihyun.

“Of course you wouldn’t answer a question without a countering one.” He was talking to himself. “It’s complicated.”

Kihyun scoffed. He wasn’t entitled to talk to Changkyun that way yet he was. “You know, my first impression of your persistence was that you were a spoiled kid who got whatever he wanted.”

“You thought right.” Those short replies killed Kihyun –the crispiness of Changkyun's usually soft voice, the eyes glancing sideways whenever they met his.

He told himself to keep his cool. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. Lim Changkyun was also a very compassionate person, someone who refused to back down; that was why this attitude seemed a bit throwing-off to Kihyun.

“She looks like she is in love with you.” Kihyun said and it struck him how the words charred on his tongue.

“I’m glad you could see that much. There I almost thought you were blind.” Changkyun didn’t add a single word.

He was instantly filled up with conflicting emotions, getting to experience what it meant to dance on the line between this and that. Between love and hate.

He was judging Changkyun.

Was he really taking someone’s love for granted? Or was Kihyun simply misinterpreting the situation? Whichever side the answer lied, disgust mingled with his feelings for Changkyun.

Maybe that was why people often mistook those conceptions; love and hate. There was love in everything, and every type of bond that was being yearned for beheld love within it. What was the supreme of those feelings when each felt so ambivalent and sublime simultaneously? Maybe that was why love and hate were so commonly associated together; not because of their resemblance -or on the contrary, their so much unlikelihood- but because both were born from such intense emotions it was hard to comprehend at first and left you with a sweet pang of distortion and another of vague hostility, as though your immune system was fighting off a new alien virus to keep you protected. The only problem was that your immune system had taken a liking to this breeding virus.

For a whole minute neither of them spoke. Changkyun broke the spell first. “Have you ever truly fallen for anyone?”

“It wasn’t about falling in love, it was about staying in love.” Kihyun answered coldly, partly because he was cross with Changkyun's attitude, partly because this was a thorny subject. The former he did every now and then, the latter was what caused his heartbreak. His first and last.

“Have you?” Changkyun insisted.

“I tend to fall for people who are emotionally unavailable.”

And at that one simple truth, he realized he had loved Hyuk so much that everything else sounded like a lie.

He realized Hyuk would always remain his ‘past’.

“I'm trying so hard not to have blood on my hands,” Changkyun began, burying his head in his hands; he was, again, a man coming undone. “I’m trying to be responsible, to be careful but I feel like I'm slowly breaking her. She has been broken, is breaking… and she deserves so much better.”

Kihyun shook his head, truly smiling at Changkyun. He felt his momentary hate die down. “You’re stupid for someone who always saw more.” Kihyun said.

_Stupid for being so much older than me yet not realizing this simple truth yet_.

He walked to Changkyun and bent down to his knees so he was in level with Changkyun's despairing face, holding his gaze. “If you want to save something from falling, you meet it at a lower point. If you want it guaranteed not to fall down and break, you meet it just before the bottom.”

He was also stupid for not realizing this earlier.

_That’s why I wouldn’t cherish you, because you would just get as damaged as I am._

He wished someone had been there to tell him that four years ago.

Changkyun stood up, his expression far-away and otherworldly, holding Kihyun's head in his hands.

And Kihyun didn’t jerk it away.

Changkyun's hands were sweetly forcing Kihyun to stand till he was in level with Changkyun's face. Albeit Changkyun's lips rebelled against words begged to be let through, he didn’t speak for a while; they just stood gazing at each other. This was a relation summed up by gazing eyes, hesitant hands and provisional words, fully understanding that words were disastrous and could irrevocably break a person. All too aware of how bulldozing the responsibility of trying not to say the wrong thing was.

“I’m this close to kissing you.” Changkyun whispered into Kihyun's lips and albeit the words took a few seconds to compute in his mind, Kihyun's heart was quicker to adjust.

And just like that, he was kissing Changkyun back.

It wasn’t chaste, it wasn’t rushed, it wasn’t forced. He kissed him slowly at first, and then at finding their rhythm he wasn’t aggressive. He could tell those lips knew what they were doing –that this wasn’t something done for the first time. But even the kiss was hesitant, as if Changkyun were scared of something.

And it dawned on him.

With effort, Kihyun pulled away. “Why are you kissing me like I could break any second?” he asked without opening his eyes, savouring everything he was aware he would lose once he opened them. He could feel Changkyun's shallow breath. He could almost feel the hesitation tangible against his skin.

“Because if I didn’t have restraint, you’d break.” He murmured in that deadly, deep voice.

Maybe Kihyun deserved breaking, maybe Kihyun wanted to get broken.

“Changkyun,” he said as he opened his eyes, seeing the purity in them, feeling the name new to his tongue and instantly liking it. “I don’t want to get close.”

That was half of the story. He would be hurt; he was scared of getting hurt. But he was also scared of breaking him. He knew he would.

Changkyun laughed, still not letting go of Kihyun's face. Kihyun smiled and let his heart be filled with the intoxication.

“Be my stranger, lovers leave.” Kihyun beseeched.

Changkyun was about to lean in for a kiss when Kihyun turned his face away, turning around and giving Changkyun his back, walking till he was a step away from the couch and running his hand through his hair. Kihyun's heart was hammering against his chest; he felt hot and he almost felt like fainting.

Changkyun grabbed his hand, spinning him around until his lips had met Kihyun's again. Kihyun no longer cared about his rising temperature; he didn’t care about how Changkyun was opening one of the last few doors to his heart. He cared about nothing in the world.

Changkyun wasn’t kissing him as leniently. There was something in the way he had first closed the distance between their lips; there was something different Kihyun was feeling. His hand was on Changkyun's nape and the other was on his heart as Changkyun laid him on the couch. Changkyun's knee gliding between the space Kihyun's parted legs allowed; Kihyun didn’t let go of his neck and Changkyun didn’t let go of his face. Changkyun only broke away to get a look at Kihyun's face, pushing his hair away from his moony eyes. Changkyun was towering over him, his eyes compassionate yet his smile playful.

Could someone really care that much?

He smirked and Kihyun thought he would die. Then he started kissing Kihyun back again, starting from his neck, to his jawline to his lips. Kihyun's eyes might have been closed but his ears weren’t and he could hear Changkyun's phone ringing. A part of him was relieved, another felt like it was on the brink of tears.

“Go ahead. Answer it.” Kihyun said breathing heavily.

“Not now.” He replied and tried to reunite their lips but Kihyun only shied away.

Opening his eyes, he saw Changkyun's were still closed. “It could be important.” He didn’t give Changkyun a chance to say no as he got up into a sitting position.

A dark expression crossed Changkyun’s face but he got out his phone and took the call nonetheless.

Kihyun wasn’t saying much and his breath soon calmed down to its normal roll. Whatever Changkyun was hearing, he didn’t like it. It was a goodbye-less call.

“I-” he began, not meeting Kihyun's eyes.

And Kihyun knew that expression by heart. But it didn’t make the pain in his chest feel less aggravating. “You’ve to go.”

He nodded.

“It’s ok, I understand. It’s probably important.” Kihyun gave him what he hoped didn’t come out as a half-hearted smile.

“If I go now, would you promise me something?” Changkyun still wouldn’t meet Kihyun's eyes, but it was okay because Kihyun couldn’t meet his either.

He laughed and it was high pitched and awkward. “What’s with you and promises?” it was rhetorical.

“Just promise me you wouldn’t ever kiss anyone the way we just kissed.”

Kihyun was shocked by the request and it prevailed on his face.

Changkyun took two long confident strides, fell down to his knees and held Kihyun's head between his hands. He was looking deeply into Kihyun's eyes while the latter was looking at the bottom of the ocean.

“Because, Kihyun, you don’t need anybody to be somebody,” he whispered and his eyes were soon clamped.

Kihyun could swear his heart stopped beating. He could swear he would die.

Changkyun was the ocean. And Kihyun was a soul struggling to stay afloat –not to go adrift.

He stood up and headed for the door, giving Kihyun's beyond-astonished face one last smile before closing the door.

“You’re the worst of them all. You’re killing me, Changkyun.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @ the gods of writing:  
> grace me with the state of mind and ability to write smut, can I have an amen?


	6. Slategray

 

 

 

Ever wondered what happened to pets when their owner died?

Kihyun had been keeping C for three days now. He hadn’t seen Changkyun since ‘ _he had to leave’_ , and today marked the fifth day. Kihyun tried to pretend it didn’t get to him by telling himself Lim Changkyun couldn’t have abandoned everything and just left, that something must have happened because he wouldn’t leave without a goodbye.

At least she was keeping his company. Kihyun hadn’t left the house in two days in spite of the pouring rain; he had a love-hate-relationship with that gloomy weather. The way it was perfect for a mood set-up yet restricted his options and fenced him in the house. It always filled him up with the urge to go out into the pouring rain and wait for whatever might come, dealing with it after it had happened. Because hell, his life had always been about waiting.

He placed his plastic bottle on his table, staring at the last pill. Then he went to the bathroom cabinet, got two bottles and emptied half of what remained of the first and all that remained of the second in the one lying on his table. Kihyun had done this so many times before but this time, he was a bit uncertain.

“Don’t give me those judgy eyes,” he glared at C who was a spectator of this fiasco. She meowed, stretched and looked away. Funny, even C didn’t approve of this.

When he went to the fridge, he realized he either went shopping soon or he was to starve to death. Taking that weather in consideration, going out and staying indoors both would result in his death he was sure.

When Kihyun was at the door, C clung to his leg. He smiled.

“Hey, now, now, he’d be back soon, I assure you. And if he didn’t, you get to spend yet another night with me. Doesn’t suck so much, eh?” he chuckled then instantly felt dejected. He had been promising C so for the third night so far. Now he understood why he never held himself responsible for any of his promises.

 

He didn’t take an umbrella. It only started raining relatively hard on his way back from the grocery shop, which was considerably far from his block.

He cursed his stupidity.

He almost laughed at a bittersweet memory, when Hyuk and he first met, it was because he, Kihyun, didn’t have an umbrella.

He was taking shelter somewhere, waiting for the rain to be relatively kind.

“Long time no see.” It was a voice Kihyun associated with nightmares. A voice that didn’t belong to this side of the planet.

The infamous red umbrella was being offered, the infamous owner of the infamous voice was looking at the sky, the infamous line was being uttered. “You wouldn’t want to get pneumonia walking home like that.”

Kihyun's jaw was wide open, he could hear his heart beating over the sound of the rain. He couldn’t think straight; Yoo Kihyun couldn’t think at all.

He hadn’t seen Hyuk in four years. He had made sure they never ran into each other.

Hyuk smiled awkwardly, his cheeks colouring and he coughed into his gloved hands. “I don’t remember you being this taciturn.” There was an air about him, something about his eyes, the very thing Kihyun liked about his eyes was the very thing that no longer remained in them. There was no light. The light had been taken out of his eyes.

This was what Kihyun had done.

The thing about meeting someone you knew well but hadn’t met in years, regardless of the status you held, was that you saw your own reflection. You clearly come across your very core. When someone regards you in a certain way, the way they look at you, the way they savour that image you have always sustained, the way you always want to keep up that image because _they_ are there to look at it –it just sticks with you. And it becomes indescribably excruciating when you see yourself fall from their perspective; to realize they can no longer see you from the same point of view. And you come to finally realize you are no longer the person you had once been, that it wasn’t them who had changed, but it was you who no longer looked at things the same way you did before. It was you who no longer looked at yourself the way you did before.

“Hyuk.” A stranger’s voice was coming out of Kihyun's mouth, a voice he didn’t recognize as his own.

Hyuk muttered something passive-aggressive about Kihyun still remembering his name under his breath.

“Let me walk you home. I’ve wanted to talk to you since forever.” He said offering Kihyun a hand.

Life had a funny way of messing up Kihyun's life. He hadn’t seen Hyuk in years, yet he had to meet him on a rainy day days after he had kissed Changkyun. The irony.

And on ignoring his offered hand, they started walking; the sound of rain being the only thing heard around them.

“Congratulation on your engagement.” Kihyun said blankly.

“Thanks.” Hyuk said. His voice didn’t sound as even as earlier; it was shaky and almost sad. During their few exchanged sentences, he didn’t look Kihyun so much as once in the eye. Kihyun didn’t blame him nonetheless.

“I heard your dad passed away, I'm sorry.”

Kihyun snorted. He didn’t have the time to beat around the bush. “What did you want to talk about?”

Hyuk’s laugh sounded painful to his ears. “You never were this rude before either.”

When he looked at Hyuk’s face, at his eyes, he almost instinctively wanted to apologize.

“Kim-sshi…” he bit his lips, stopping before a red light. “He told him about-”

“Don’t even consider sympathy.” Kihyun hissed. And it took them both off guard. They both looked away, Kihyun regretting his impulse and Hyuk dwelling on pain.

They were finally across the street from where Kihyun lived.

Yet, the rain wasn’t getting any kinder.

“Thanks.” Kihyun said, stealing a glance at Hyuk.

“No need.” Hyuk replied; he didn’t look like he was going to leave. “Are you happy, Kihyun?”

On that very second, on that very question, Kihyun almost cried. He so desperately wanted to. He felt like he could go to pieces at the question and utter all the apologies Hyuk deserved and tell him how he truly felt about everything, how he would take everything back, how undeserving he was of such question; how undeserving he had always been of everything.

“I’ll get there.” Kihyun nodded to himself then he forced himself to meet Hyuk’s eyes.

He couldn’t tell for sure, but Hyuk was looking at him. Not in the same way Hyuk had once looked at the shining stars.

“To be honest, I just wanted to talk to you. The way things ended between us doesn’t really sit well with me.” He wondered if Hyuk had ever rehearsed those lines. If Hyuk had been thinking of him the same way he had never left his mind, the same Kihyun let his memories torture him –the same way he enabled his pain because there was nothing else he could feel.

Yoo Kihyun, masochist of the year, a victim of his mind.

“But I feel like you should know this, just because it ended, it doesn’t mean it failed.” On softly dropping his voice, Hyuk’s hand was about to touch Kihyun's face when the latter stepped back, out of the umbrella’s range and into the drizzling rain. He could clearly see the hurt in Hyuk’s eyes.

“Well, endings don’t really _sit well_ with me.” And on saying that line, Kihyun realized just how the years failed to take away the bitterness from his heart. “I'm sorry, but I've always been this immature. Nothing you wouldn’t know tho.”

The last remark rekindled the pain in Hyuk’s eyes again. Hyuk was no longer looking at the sky and feeling hopeful; he was looking at the ground and feeling at the end of his tether. Even when they were no longer together, Kihyun was still hurting him. He wondered when enough would be enough.

He looked up and smiled at Kihyun. “That’s all I wanted to hear. I'm glad you’re trying to be happy, Kihyun. I really am.”

Were those rain-drops, or were those tear-drops?

“What about you, Hyuk? Are you happy?” it was sincere.

And Kihyun got his answer. It was both. In the rain he could see the tears well up in Hyuk’s eyes. This was what he had done; this was how much he had broken Hyuk.

“I don't know.” Hyuk replied in a small voice that threatened to break. Kihyun felt like he didn’t deserve to exist. He had wished that by getting engaged, Hyuk had finally started to piece together again –that he was happy.

“Listen,” Kihyun began somewhere from the deadness of his pain, clenching his hands into fists at his sides because he didn’t trust himself. Hyuk was standing before his eyes, his face contorted in agony again and on the verge of crying. “I'm a failure as a person, and what I had done isn’t excusable but you should know that I-”

Kihyun didn’t register what was happening, but Hyuk had closed the gap in one long stride and just before his lips could end up on Kihyun's, the latter had looked away, his hand shielding his lips.

Kihyun gulped.

The umbrella lied untended-to on the ground. And Kihyun couldn’t turn to face him.

“I’m sorry.” Hyuk said and it was barely audible.

“I hope you find your happiness, Hyuk. I'm sorry I deprived you of it for years.” He whispered and without so much as glancing twice at him, Kihyun started jogging –crossing the street. He didn’t enter the block; he had disappeared into the dark alley nearby. And he turned to watch Hyuk pick up his umbrella and dejectedly walk away.

Kihyun truly wished him happiness. From the bottom of his heart he wished Hyuk could find it.

This was probably their happy ending. With how things ended years ago, this was their happy scenario. Kihyun realized that despite how haunting four years ago was, he could be saved from his memories. That after tonight, Hyuk could hate him; Hyuk could feel become guilt-free. _Kihyun_ could move on.

At least, he thought so. His heavy heart indicated it was reluctant to allow that change to take place; it was reluctant to let go.

He didn’t realize he was still staring at where Hyuk had been standing not minutes ago. There was a car pulling over, and he saw a familiar figure come out from the passenger’s seat. He didn’t see the driver, but he could still see Changkyun standing frozen in the rain, without any shelter from the ruthless drops of pain. His head was hunched down and when he looked up, he was directly looking at Kihyun.

Lim Changkyun looked far-away. Lim Changkyun was so far away.

There was rain blurring both of their visions, but he didn’t look away. Changkyun was still looking his direction; he was looking at Kihyun.

Kihyun stepped out of the alley and once again into the rain.

It was gradually getting lighter; the four minutes it had taken to completely stop seemed to stretch into eternity as they locked gazes.

“Are you ok?” Kihyun shouted from across the street. He was trying to make Changkyun smile; he didn’t like it when Changkyun wasn’t smiling.

Changkyun nodded.

He wasn’t convinced. Kihyun crossed the street, walking till he was approximately twenty-centimeters away from Changkyun.

“Hey.” Changkyun said.

He didn’t like that flat hey. Changkyun's voice was round; it had dimensions, it had depth, it had height –it had everything most people lacked. “Are you certain? You don’t sound so good.”

He smiled and his eyes closed; Changkyun's eyes never closed before when he smiled. This was because he wasn’t smiling; he was holding back his tears. And when Kihyun's answer came out, he felt the second bullet to his heart that night.

“No.”

Kihyun looked at him and realized something had changed about Changkyun, something was never going to be the same.

Silently and as he dealt his pain, he watched the rain-drop falling from a hair-strand, mixing with a fallen tear, slipping all the way down on Changkyun's cheek and to the ground. He watched as Changkyun's glossy eyes glistened with all the tears kept at bay. These were the clouds; the harder it rained, the brighter it would shine, the more chances there were for a rainbow to appear.

Kihyun interlaced his fingers with Changkyun's, surprised to find Changkyun's body temperature almost close to his. Without saying a word, he started walking, feeling Changkyun's hand tighten a bit around his.

 

He had managed to get Changkyun into his room. Changkyun half-dragged himself, half-walked until he was sitting on Kihyun's bed, dripping on the floor. Kihyun searched for a towel and went to stand in front of him. Changkyun looked distant, as though his body were in the present but his mind were somewhere in the past. Overlooking that sported expression, Kihyun started drying Changkyun's hair as much as he could, then his face. Knowing it would be impossible to ask Changkyun to change out of his soaked clothes, Kihyun did his best to dry his T-shirt after he made Changkyun take off his jacket. Kihyun could feel C rubbing herself against his calf.

When he was done with the drying, he had to tell Changkyun something. He pressed Changkyun's hand, twice before he snapped out of his doldrums and looked at Kihyun. Changkyun looked doped; Kihyun could tell because it was a field he was an expert in.

“Hey,” Kihyun pressed him an affectionate smile. “This is all temporary.”

He tried to smile, but Kihyun was sure it was physically painful for him at this point. He was about to go make some hot drink when C meowed. It sounded sad. Way too sad.

“I know. Me too.” Kihyun said as he passed her by.

And by the time Kihyun was back with two cups of hot chocolate, Changkyun had already been sleeping. Not under his blanket, but literally lying however he fell down and … sleeping. Even when Kihyun moved him slightly so he could put the blanket over his cold body, Changkyun didn’t so much as twitch.

He looked so peaceful. He sounded so peaceful.

****

Kihyun knew he was dreaming; he knew it because dreams weren’t always cruel.

In his dream, Hyuk was dead. It was a happy dream because sometimes he thought being dead would have been easier than what Hyuk had gone through.

He woke up to the sound of thunder. His eyes fluttered open and he could see the room being briefly illuminated by the lightening as it continued to hail outside even though it was still pretty dark outside. One of the windows flung open, that nearest to his bed, where Changkyun was still lying.

Kihyun got off the couch, trying to be as quiet as possible as he tiptoed around the bed. But when he threw a glance at the sleeping Changkyun, he could feel him looking back at him. Changkyun's hand reached from under the blanket and circled around Kihyun's wrist. He didn’t voice anything; he just smiled. And as he still lied horizontally on bed, he scooted over and pulled Kihyun next to him.

Kihyun was rolled onto his side, legs dangling out of the bed in spite of its small size. He was facing Changkyun as he mirrored his position.

“I missed you.” Changkyun said. Low, deep and still as deadly as ever.

Kihyun could feel his insides flip. He was about to reply but Changkyun put his finger on his lips and shook his head.

“Sshh, I don’t want you to say anything. I just want to look at you.”

Kihyun leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lip. Changkyun’s lips were cold and chapped and he tasted like snow for some reason, but Kihyun wouldn’t take back that kiss for anything.

Changkyun laughed in that husky low tone.

“Remember when you told me you hadn’t been a good person?” he was whispering. Changkyun's voice was chameleon-like with tones the same way a chameleon was with colours. “I'm afraid I would tell you this and you’d hate me, because I've done a lot of things that aren’t…” Changkyun seemed to be struggling to find the word, “that aren’t humane.”

If everything was bound in the infinite prison of time then the recurrence of events was inevitable. Human experiences were similar. Everything that had happened to you might happen to someone else yet each reaction could be the other’s opposite pole. How comforting it was to look at someone and see parallel lines on their faces, faces that spoke stories written by the same person but recounted by different people. Lines that spoke of pain. It would always be pain.

Kihyun shook his head, drawing a smile from Changkyun.

“You may not know it, but you’re a person who is keeping this universe equated. You matter just as anyone else. And-”

This time Changkyun sealed his lips because despite the numerous attempts, he failed to find the words.

Kihyun didn’t care about what Changkyun was saying; he didn’t believe Changkyun could really be a bad person. Words were disastrous because they took on whatever shades the situation induced. They were relative; they were clumsy. They either meant nothing or they meant everything. Even if Changkyun had messed up, the way he was looking at Kihyun right now, this was someone who was sorry for everything they couldn’t change; this was someone who carried the weight of the world all alone on their shoulders.

“How could you be like this?” Kihyun asked, breaking the rule. “How could you be so big on the inside?”

He didn’t need an answer. Answers sometimes served no good; if anything, they ruined the magic.

“You would hate me if you knew everything.” Changkyun whispered back, rolling onto his back and blocking his vision by his forearm. “I've been living a lie and it’s about time I ended it.”

It started raining even more vigorously.

Kihyun caressed his cheek, slowly feeling every inch of it and trying to convey all the words unsaid in his heart. He peeled off Changkyun's hand and looked at him just in time as he got on top of him. He didn’t do anything yet. He just hoped the shocked look on Changkyun's face wasn’t because of what he was up to.

Kihyun leaned forward and started kissing him slowly. Changkyun didn’t kiss back at first, then on sitting up in bed without breaking them apart, he held Kihyun's head and kissed him more fiercely. His tongue burned against the insides of Kihyun's mouth, his hand was setting Kihyun's head on fire as it held it. And Kihyun was getting hotter by the second. He could feel Changkyun's hand under his waistband. Everything burned; all the tease-brushing it did as he was taking off his shirt burned. Kihyun pressed himself more into Changkyun, feeling the heat of his body more intimately.

He was seated on Changkyun's lap and he could feel he wasn’t the only one who wanted this.

He couldn’t be happier Changkyun had been lying horizontally on the bed. He didn’t like all this teasing; he would combust before they were done. With some needless strength he pushed Changkyun back and he was flat on his back, looking all sexy and wide-eyed at Kihyun. He yanked off his shirt and threw it on the ground, hearing Changkyun laugh. When his hands reached lower to unbuckle Changkyun's belt, the latter’s hands clasped on Kihyun's.

“Are you sure of this?” he asked cautiously. At that second, Changkyun's voice made him question everything in this world; Kihyun started getting drunk on that tone. “I could go to jail for this.” To which Changkyun had added a laugh.

“Don’t worry. I'm sure.” He was surprised at how even his voice came out.

“Kihyun, I…”

“For fuck’s sake, Changkyun, I'm not a minor. I'm almost twenty-two –just fuck me already.” Kihyun snapped and he could hear Changkyun laughing heartily and no sooner had his pants ended up on the floor.

Changkyun pulled him closer and kissed him deeply and for long. He broke away to whisper something sexy in Kihyun's ear then Kihyun could feel the mattress beneath his bare back and see Changkyun hovering over him. Without having to think twice, he parted his legs and threw his hands around Changkyun; his heartbeat was madly accelerating.

“I'm sorry, but I'm not very restrained. We’re doing this my way.” Changkyun was still whispering and this was enough to make Kihyun moan with pleasure sublimating the physical one. He was burning up.

Kihyun closed his eyes. He could hear Changkyun's groan. He could hear his very own moan mixed with Changkyun's name; he could feel the momentary tensing at the pain. He could feel Changkyun's lips near his face as he left trails of fire with every kiss that burned on his skin, making Kihyun ache with longing for more.

Could Changkyun hear the irregular pattern Kihyun's heartbeat had sported?  
  
The rain still soaked the whole world outside those four walls.

Changkyun's hands were twirling his hair, both of them looking at the much-too-low ceiling. Their legs entangled under the sheet. Kihyun's head was lying somewhere between Changkyun's chest and navel. The sound of rain was calming his heart.

“I wonder what colour truly is you hair.” Changkyun mused.

He smiled. “What colour do you think it is?”

“White.” He said, still playing with a strand. “Because I can't come up with a purer colour.”

 _That’s the thing about you, Lim Changkyun._ Kihyun mused. _You could give anyone moments of absolute and illicit happiness._

Kihyun was silent for a while, falling back to listening to the pattering against the glass.

“Was this why you had to go abroad?” Kihyun asked.

After the last hour of his life, Changkyun's laugh was now a combination of a sweet laugh and an alluring moan –all to produce that sultry, bottomless voice he owned; a voice deeper than the ocean. And Kihyun wanted to be sent to his grave hearing his laugh, hearing him laugh.

“Picture this. You, a prestigious doctor who is well-reputed, hearing your only son telling you he had zero interest in women and in marrying.” He snickered and Kihyun couldn’t tell whether or not it was the laugh-away-the-pain kind of laughs. “He blew me off.”

Kihyun couldn’t understand how on earth this was possible. This was one of the things gone fundamentally wrong with this universe –how a parent just gave up their own child.

He rolled onto his side so he could take a look at Changkyun's face. Kihyun had to voice his thoughts; he had to reach out to Changkyun. “How do you feel?”

In the sound more than the answer, Kihyun relished. “It’s all history now.”

At that, Kihyun could aver what kind of laughs it had been.

He stopped playing with Kihyun's hair and turned his gaze to his face. “You know what hurts the most tho? Is that I love him so much yet I have to live with the fact I had let him down. That every day I've to see that look in his eyes and live with it. And there’s nothing I could do about it.”

Kihyun looked at Changkyun's eyes and realized they always synced with his voice.

The more he gazed into Changkyun's eyes, the more he felt like he could integrate. And it filled him with that feeling he associated with the moon while it underwent a lunar eclipse. Two worlds-apart entities aligning you caught yourself wishing they were one because the panorama was exquisitely magical; not just in the picturesque way, but in a way that made you understand just the quantity of emptiness in you whereas it filled you up; as it became an addressed problem which found a comprehensive solution. A glow which could lift you up –his halo. Because a wistful part of you wondered why these two entities weren’t born as one, why such a phenomenon could never occur forever.

However, it was the same part that knew these two entities couldn’t orbit together. The presence of one often negated the other. It was just not meant to be.

The charm lied in the fact it was such a once in a blue moon thing.

This world should have been based off of something less painful –something less tragic.

“And seeing how Yeri is into me is even worse. Like it is hard for her to be around me. As if my very existence pains so many people and for that I'm just sorry.” He stretched and emphasized the last sentence as though it had the capacity to be said and resaid and resaid till he decided it was enough. Despondently, Kihyun wondered how many times Changkyun had said so, had felt this… invalid.

And he finally found it in him.

“I don’t think anyone should say that. It’s like you're apologizing for being yourself.” Kihyun said. He had been telling himself that for years. It was about time he passed this on to someone else if he failed to apply it. “You are who you are and that is reality. This is what you can't do a thing about. The only thing you should apologize for is pushing people away.”

He laughed. “Kihyun, I believe that when people talk, they’re partly talking to themselves.”

Kihyun shrugged. “Maybe because when you become this vulnerably honest it’s because someone being there wasn't enough. You need someone who had been through it, felt it all, a relatable parallelism, a sense of belonging. Not to be afraid as you show them exactly where it hurts. Just laying your weapons down and screaming in triumph because you win.”

Changkyun was silent; Kihyun could feel his eyes on him. That pair of compassionate orbs.

Wasn’t that what Changkyun taught him though? Even if a weakness had been exploited, you still wouldn’t have lost. Because you got better; opening up made you get better.

“You're amazing.” Changkyun disclosed. Plain and simple and Kihyun could swear he could soar till the end of the skyline.

The art of breaking; it was lovely. You had to know exactly when to fall, where to fall, how to fall, and _why_ to fall.

 

 

 

  

What if those who say the world is so simple are no different from those who know it is more complex than what words can and can't convey? What if they both have always been singing from the same sheet? Everything is messed up, that’s a given. You’re deprived from all forms of answers to the untranslated questions. People are messed up in their own way because you’re born with your not-so-fair share of pain and hurt and you reap them as you go along the way. Nothing makes sense and that alone hurts.

There are times at night when you’re alone in the dark; you find tears trickling down your cheeks for no apparent reason.  
At first you’re trying to get your act together, silently crying that is. But you quickly let it go. And you cry for everything unfixable in this world. You cry for everything that’s not right. You cry for the little child in you that had once dreamed of a world united by ties of love and affinity. You cry at the naivety of the child and the way the grown up is mercilessly laughing at the innocent child and his pure ideals –so pure they seem translucent that you hate the vague reflection of the monster you come to face. You feel the tearing thorn in your heart and the cold dew in your eyes. And you cry and cry because there’s nothing else to do because you know there’s nothing you can do. And you start getting angry, getting this stupid urge to open your window and let your head out in the rain as you scream out. Funny thing is, the rain can't drown your scream. Because nothing can wipe out the pain, not even when the rain ceases to pour. In fact, it’s going to make your scream seem all the more loud; if anything at all, it could only rob it from its beauty.

_We don’t admit it. We are always sidestepping the real issues; in a disarrayed way we all secretly admit there’s a subtle charm to pain._

Kihyun wished he weren’t so quick on throwing everything for the sake of art.

How did he end up in hell when he was just soaring over cloud nine? But then again what led to this? How could one be so fine one second and before you could blink they become depressed; what caused this abrupt polarity? Always searching for a reason, always looking for an explanation, the lurid answer is overlooked: humans are made of emotions and emotions are unreliable.

He was sitting before Changkyun's ardently concerned eyes; they were disapproving and reprimanding. He was sitting on the couch before his small bottle that lied closed on the table. Changkyun was five-feet away with the two other small bottles.

He had been going about it for nearly thirty minutes now. Kihyun couldn’t look him in the eye. He was already stuck in the past, replaying Changkyun's words over and over and over again as though they would change –reform into something that aroused less feelings on Kihyun's part. And for the first time, Kihyun felt numb in the presence of Changkyun.

“I thought you were an addict. I was relatively okay if it were addiction, but this-” he jabbed enough indignation in his _this_ Kihyun would have probably flinched had he been there, “-this is suicidal. Mixing those two medicines could kill you.”

There was nothing new he had added. Changkyun had been going around in circles, coming to the same conclusion no matter how he phrased those facts.

Kihyun was careless, and he was caught.

_‘Was that why you faint ever so often? This could kill you.’_

_‘The distant eyes, the faraway look, the emo air, it’s all because you_ induce _them … you could_ die _.’_

 _‘Those are what brings_ the _other you.’_

_‘I can't believe you still choose to throw away your life.’_

“That explains the state you often slip to.” Changkyun wasn’t pacing; he was just looking at what remained of the person before his eyes. “You’re not addicted to drugs, Kihyun, you’re addicted to pain.”

Kihyun found himself smiling bitterly again. He was everything but addicted to pain. “No, doc, I'm trying not to feel pain. I'm not high on pain.” Kihyun might have obliterated mentioning that he was high on not feeling.

“Kihyun, you're not only overdosing, but also mixing Ambien with a serotonin-based medicine. Who even prescribed these to you?”

Nothing new, facts being stated.

There were just some roads you should walk alone. Be the moon that guided your soul, the shore that embraced your body, the illumination cast down by the shadow of your shameless mind, the hope fortified by the motive.

“Sometimes, I get that feeling,” Kihyun began, snapping out of his trance, feeling the challenge of trying to articulate. He looked at Changkyun's eyes; they weren’t hateful. Even when he was beginning to meet the monster, they weren’t hateful. “A sound. It just screams in my mind, letting me know it’s about time I licked my own wounds. It’s about time I learnt how to deliberately hurt myself to understand how easy it was being able to heal.”

He could hear Changkyun gulp; he could see the pain in his eyes. But Kihyun couldn’t do anything. Sometimes, one needed to cross a boundary to remember why it was initially set.

How many sacrifices were needed to save someone? Was giving up something the only way to save it?

“Why do you have to do this to me?” it was guttural, like a person gasping for breath. Changkyun walked till he was on his knees before Kihyun's very eyes, holding both of his hands.

Changkyun's hands were so warm.

“I'm going to show you miracles can still happen. Don’t give up just yet.” His voice died down by the end of the sentence because his lips were done talking and started applying.

This wasn’t stating facts; this wasn’t something he had told Kihyun before. This had something that for a second rejuvenated him, reached out to Kihyun and brought him back to life. His voice, his smile, his words, his touch, his kiss –they almost made Kihyun believe there was hope; that there could be some other way. That he could give up his small medicinal bottle.

Changkyun got back to his feet, the remains of a smile not only on his lips but also on Kihyun's. Kihyun could feel his very own finger being raised to touch his very own cold lips.

Involuntarily, Kihyun let out a sound akin to a sob. “Why are you assuming it’s because of you, that it’s about you?”

Changkyun's hand burrowed its way into his hair, wearing one of the most painful and most hesitant expressions known in history. When he spoke, it was measured and careful. “I'm so sorry you’ve to find about it this way. Almost two weeks ago, when I disappeared, yea? A patient’s friend called, all frantic and alert telling me my patient was on the verge of taking his own life.” He paused; Changkyun was surely reliving a nightmare.

And Kihyun was struggling with his own.

“And by some miracle I had managed to talk him out of it when I arrived. For two days I was making sure he was fine, talking his friend out of sinking into depression herself. And the third day, she took her life … and he soon followed her. Because I had left my phone at home, because I wasn’t there to tell them how much they mattered. I had failed as a person, and instead of one dead body, they became two.” He closed his eyes, clenching his teeth. Kihyun couldn’t even begin to imagine what Changkyun was feeling. Too bad Kihyun himself was already caught up in his own ethereal hell.

Changkyun fell on the floor, holding his head in his hands. “I just really don’t want to feel like this anymore. I don’t want people to pay for my mistakes. I don’t want them to pay their own life because I failed to be there for them.”

Kihyun was going through two mutually exclusive kinds of pain: Changkyun's and his own.

He didn’t want Changkyun to feel like that; he didn’t deserve to blame himself for something he didn’t do … but what did that implicate.

What was real?

The pieces were falling into place; they were being thrown and they struggled to fit in in spite of the force.

“You’re not really a doctor, are you?” Kihyun's voice was smouldered.

Changkyun shook his head and it was very rueful. As though he was apologizing for more than a mere lie.

“I'm a psychiatrist. I'm also twenty-four. I'm sorry for lying.” He let that sink. And Kihyun could swear he gained twice his weight. How was the ground bearing his weight?

Numbly, he nodded, processing.

“Is this even real?” it came out cold. Colder than the rain that continued to fall outside –colder than he felt when he usually numbed-out.

“Yes-”

“Were I a case, doc?” he beamed at Changkyun, holding back his tears. How did this end up like that?

Kihyun's eyes closed as he smiled and caught the tears before they fell, punishing him by letting him see the sheer panic in Changkyun's eyes. “Tell me the truth, I mean it’s nothing.”

“At first.” Was Changkyun's reply.

The room must have dropped at least thirty degrees. How much did it take to freeze all the blood in his veins?

He was saying something else; he was rectifying, assuaging Kihyun.

_What is love?_

Kihyun was still nodding, still smiling, still biting back his tears. “Say, doc, ever wondered why it's _confessing a sin_ and _confessing love_?” he paused to take his breath, its durability span seemed to shorten with each unsaid word lurking in his heart. He refused to look at Changkyun. “Both carry the same burden, same guilt, and both rarely give you the aspired-to peace of mind.”

He rose to his feet, gently shoving his bottle in his pocket. 

“Also. Have you ever asked yourself why the comparison of love to a drug is so common?”

“Kihyun, please.” Kihyun might not be seeing him, but the pleading that dominated Changkyun's timbre was like adding salt to an open wound. To a still-fresh wound.

Kihyun shook his head; he could feel Changkyun's breath against his face. Kihyun was the one who closed the distance. “Please, I need to get this out of his system. You confessed, and I have two confessions for you. It’s only fair.”

Again, Kihyun closed his eyes, held both sides of Changkyun's head between his hands, and kissed him. Changkyun didn’t react.

That was exactly what Kihyun needed.

 “It’s not merely the intoxication, and surely it’s not just the good side of the story of losing your mind. It’s the numbness of senses, the prevalence of the irrational because the rational wasn’t conceived so it’s better to not understand something so ununderstandable.” Kihyun laughed, his hand still lingered on Changkyun's cheek.

This hurt. And it wasn’t going to go away.

Changkyun was shaking his head, saying Kihyun's name, begging him.

“But you know, those are still the good points. It’s a drug because no matter who you are, once you’re deep in love, it’s hard to imagine a life without that person or without love. And that’s where the addiction is generated. It wounds up torturing you. Living at its mercy is painful but giving it up is even more so. It’s the longing, the wanting,  the abstruse desire, and it’s also the pain.”

And all those words were nothing but a small allusion to what really was. Because what that person went through during that state of mind was taboo to fence to words.

“I'm sorry you feel this way. I'm sorry I don’t really know what to say in those situations. But here comes the last of my piece.” Kihyun wiped the grin off his face; he couldn’t keep at it any longer and he stared at the ground, his hand falling limply to his side.

Changkyun was holding his hand, begging Kihyun to look him in the eye.

“Guess it’s obvious,” Kihyun let out what he hoped would be the last of his laughs for the day. “But I love you.”

Kihyun pulled back his hand, walked till he had reached the door then halted.

_You were the back note, alright. And just like I could hear you at will, I could mute you at will._

And he was seeing Changkyun's lips move. Kihyun knew Changkyun was saying something … but Changkyun already said what he had said; this was the part where Kihyun got broken into pieces.

He opened the door. “Almost forgot, that’s one confession for you.” Laugh. “I'm also dying… so yea.”

And just like that, Kihyun had shut the door to Changkyun's room and exited into what soon became the subzero snow. With memories engraved colder than any December snow.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...CAUGHT IN A LIIIIIIIEE  
>  alright then :")


	7. Sienna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ' I'm back, bitches. -A '

**Two,**

**Être de Raison.**

 

  

Among all the beds one could wake up in, a hospital’s bed was by far the worst.

Changkyun had opened his eyes and he was looking at the man he had spent most of his life trying to get him to acknowledge him. He could remember the most painful memories of his childhood; Changkyun could remember just why he hated hospitals so much. Just being there could stir up so much pain he would rather not deal with.

His father was looking at him with his stern and unyielding eyes; even when his own son was lying in a hospital bed with a bandaged head, he still couldn’t summon some pity into his heart. Changkyun was glad he had awoken before his father –or anybody for the matter- was in the same room as him.

He could feel some distant pain, physically and mentally.

It had taken him some time to register his surroundings, but it had taken him more time and by far much shock to realize something was fundamentally wrong. Despite the relentless disorientation and loud buzzing in his ears, he could tell by the snow falling outside his window that it was almost New Year.

When the doctor came a few seconds prior to Changkyun's ascending panic, he had checked his eyes –Changkyun's pupils had managed to respond favourably- and then he asked Changkyun about a few basics. Name, date and place of birth, whether he knew where he was, and what year they were in –Changkyun got them all right. He felt there was some impending doom, and more strongly, he felt he was responsible for it.

Scribble, scribble.

It wasn’t until the doctor had asked him what he last remembered that Changkyun lied.

“I got in a car accident.” It seemed like the most natural thing to assume even though he didn’t recall snow or rain. The doctor was asking him to be more specific and as he was sitting too close to his bed, luckily so. Changkyun noticed the date in the doctor’s wristwatch; it was the seventeenth. And he had already worked out it was December. He was alert, he felt responsible for the time lapse yet he felt like he shouldn’t divulge this new information. Changkyun told the doctor that he couldn’t remember where he had been exactly. The doctor asked about the specific date, Changkyun told him he remembered the day before being December sixteenth.

The doctor nodded and told him the brain scans had been clear of any abnormalities but they had to keep just to be sure and he would have to come for regular checkups. Nutshell, he was fine and soon to be discharged.

On his departure, Changkyun’s father was entering the room.

He muttered one cold remark about how Changkyun should be more careful driving.

“Hey, dad,” Changkyun said with a weak smile. “Would you pick me up and drive me home tomorrow?”

Changkyun honestly had no idea where ‘home’ was, but he knew it wasn’t with his father.

His father agreed. Changkyun told him he felt tired and wanted to sleep; he had deliberately told him so before his father could create an excuse to leave. Slowly, Changkyun closed his eyes, adding some credibility to his words.

When his father was gone, Changkyun was doing his best not to cry.

_My name is Lim Changkyun and I just survived a car accident. I should be twenty-four, I'm a psychiatrist. I love poetry and I have unrequited feelings of love towards my best friend. My mom died when I was ten, my dad is a surgeon... and something is missing._

 

The following day, his father had kept his promise.

His father was waiting in the car while Changkyun signed the last form. Everything seemed to be happening fast and knowing how impatient Lim Chol was, he, too, should start walking fast.

That was the thing about hospitals, everyone was always in a rush because time was never on their side.

When Changkyun turned around, he had almost bumped into someone; a boy. He started to apologize, but when he met the boy’s eyes, he was rendered speechless.

The boy looked plain horror-struck, his mouth was agape, and his eyes indicated something was warring behind that dark bottomless pair. He couldn’t look away from his eyes, they had something that could fix Changkyun's gaze, something that made his heart clench and unclench in no specific pattern.

“I'm sorry,” he said and Changkyun barely heard it. The boy was passing him by, about to proceed walking to the hospital’s door when, without turning around, Changkyun's hand reached out and gripped his wrist. He wished he could explain why he did that; some people hated to have their personal space invaded, especially by strangers who almost ran into them seconds ago.

Changkyun spun around just in time to meet the crescents the boy’s eyes made as a smile spread across his lips. He was about to speak but the boy beat him to it.

 “I'm glad you’re okay.” He had said and it sounded so heart-warming and so genuine Changkyun almost thought the boy’s words had hugged him. However, Changkyun was still thunder-struck, he couldn’t formulate speech and his head hurt. The boy jerked away Changkyun's hand and proceeded walking away.

This was what he missed.

 

“You fucking asshole.” Jooheon greeted him after he had greeted –and said goodbye to his father. Changkyun was standing on the pavement in some unfamiliar street. Allegedly, this was where he lived. He was still trying to administer which was more on fire, Jooheon’s livid words or his fiery eyes.

Changkyun smirked then said, “Nice to see you’re alive too, Hyung.”

“I'm going to take the happiness straight out of your smiling face, you insensitive little fuck.” Jooheon threatened and punched him in the chest. It hurt.

Changkyun grumbled. “Calling _me_ insensitive is a bit pushing it since I'm not the one hitting my injured friend.”

“Next time, I’d go for the head. For two days I couldn’t contact you and when I dropped by you weren’t home.” He hissed and a passerby gave them an admonishing stare.

“Can we take this somewhere else?” Changkyun suggested, anxious for some reason.

Jooheon cursed and started walking towards a relatively small compound-block. Changkyun followed suit, letting him lead the way. The interior was just the right match for the exterior construction; it looked somehow uncared for and as though not much effort had been put into cleaning it. When Jooheon stopped in front of a door on the fourth floor, he gestured for Changkyun to open it, and the latter jokingly asked, “Why did I rent this room again?”

Jooheon took the bait. “Because you’re a masochist with a father-complex and so many other issues. So much for a psychiatrist, sweet Changkyunnie.”

Perhaps he had a relatively fair idea why he would end up in such a compound. To put it to plain words, Lim Changkyun knew what he was running away from and what he wanted to prove. There was only one key he didn’t recognize and it should be the right one.

Taking in the room, it did look like something his creation.

Jooheon kicked his butt and pushed him until he was sitting on a droopy couch.

Jooheon stood in front of him, arms crossed and eyes locked on Changkyun's. He looked like a teacher ready to verbally beat an undisciplined student.

“What are you so angry about?” saying Changkyun didn’t completely get the answer to his very own question would be a downright lie.

“You never disappeared off the face of the earth without at least leaving me some kind of notice.”

Changkyun smiled. It would have been a simpler phrasing if Jooheon had said he had been worried.

“Are you okay?” Jooheon kept glancing sideways.

“I am, why wouldn’t I?”

Sometimes it just took one question before you could break down. Changkyun focused more on the hurt in his very own question and less on breaking down.

“Before you disappeared you had been acting weird, and there’s that thing that happened with Chan … I just had to-” he trailed off.

Changkyun might have not known what had happened, but the intuition in his gut was gradually becoming more alert. He could easily recognize his watermark on any damage he had done, and whatever this was, it held his signature.

He didn’t know who Chan was, and he felt nothing at the sound of his name, but the way Jooheon had dropped his name felt like the name entailed some hefty bad significance.

His laugh turned into a cough, he proceeded nevertheless. “Okay, there, there. Don’t take on that gloomy tone with me, hyung-”

Jooheon cut him midsentence, pushed some cushion into his face and sat down next to him. “Just shut up.” He sighed and Changkyun couldn’t help but smile.

Jooheon stayed till night had fallen. Changkyun almost thought a six-month leap was something he would certainly miss, but from what he had understood from Jooheon was that he was still the same person he had last recalled being.

When Changkyun was bidding him goodbye, the latter had asked him about ‘C’, about where she was.

He was flustered, he told Jooheon she would probably show up soon. Jooheon simply narrowed his eyes, he looked skeptic. Who blamed him though? Without adding up to Changkyun's discomfort Jooheon had left.

Lost, he headed for the toilet, there was something very off-putting about the whole situation. Changkyun had never been a careless driver, the timing of the accident was questionable, the way he was intent on keeping up a lie about this RA could only grow his distress.

In the mirror reflection Changkyun tried to wrap his head around what he was seeing. For years, he had been looking for something, for a reason; but what he always came across were lies he lived. He closed his eyes and tried to remember. He didn’t know what he wanted, but something was missing; that was all he knew. Nothing came up, he just felt some acute pain rising up all the way through his neck and to his head. He wished a face would come up, a sound, a perfume, a memory, a name. But it was nothing but increasingly agitating pain and distorted images.

Again, all he knew was that something was missing.

On his pillow was a crumpled lilac paper, neat and awaiting him. He approached it hesitantly and with cautious steps. In his handwriting, a fluid black ball-pen that seemed to have glided a beat too quickly along the flimsy surface of the paper in hasty jottings, as if something were out there to catch it; came a statement that made him shut his eyes down and loll his head to the back as he conceived the content.

_“You caused this.”_

 

 

 

 

No matter how hard you tried to understand someone else, to wrap your head around the depth of their feelings, you would never reach the extent of understanding the precise shade of the emotional gradient they had felt through a moment of pure bliss or pure agony. Human experiences were indeed similar, but aspiring to understand everyone based on your comprehension and basic study of your reaction was foolish naivety.

Because in the end, it was _your_ criteria.

Changkyun could hear some bittersweet melodies slipping into his room. He realized he knew the tune, he knew the concerto. He didn’t care about the source of the music, because as he listened he forgot who he was and where he was.

Wasn’t it depressing how one could so easily take refuge in sadness?

It sounded like a bottomless well which echoed back each tune to give it twice the gravity of the sentiment. It made him feel as though he were looking deeply into the well and having one of those feelings; the overwhelming desire to jump. The performer had a way with the melodies. He could see the tunes totter and dissolve in the air before his eyes; he could only imagine the passion in which they played.

Changkyun's temporary bliss was soon killed. Then there was a sound of something crashing, a dreadful heated scream then silence. He was starting to panic, he had witnessed enough of those episodes. Before Changkyun could make up his mind, he heard a sharp involuntary sob that could only have escaped while trying to suppress it.

Only then did he care about the source of the music.

The following night, Changkyun was standing in front of his neighbour’s door with a box of chocolate in hand.

It didn’t take memories to feel, it took empathy.

He was faced with two options. Either he had delivered it personally and offered a shoulder to cry on accompanied with major human bonding after handling the fury associating the hurt, or he had simply left it and went on his way like the coward he was. Unsurprisingly, he went with the latter.

It was never a question of whether or not he wanted to ease off someone’s pain, it had always been a question of what he refused to give up in the process. Sometimes the sincerity he saw in others’ eyes was so moving he forgot to speak; or it could affect him so much he felt he would spill the story of his life out in the open ready for criticism and harsh patronizing. He was never willing to leave a part of himself with everyone who went through pain. Otherwise he would probably end up with nothing.

Changkyun thought if he could do nothing about his life then at least he could help someone out; this was the sole purpose of him embarking on his career. Changkyun's life had been full of this: a message sent anonymously to a friend in their darkest hour; when you know it was just one word that separated them from the free fall, one word that tied them to this world. You see them standing at the edge of the cliff; in a matter of fact, you had been conscious of them perpetually standing there for longer than enough. It was anonymous because you were scared to let them know you care that much, because you know while you were trying so hard to save them it was rather impossible not to lay yourself bare in front of them. Because that was how it worked, vulnerability drew out strength from others’ vulnerability. And in the shared pain you find solace; it fortified the will. Because the contract implored a fixed amount of pain to keep the universe balanced. Alas, they were on the road to being fixed, you were teetering between breaking yourself and breaking them. It was the warning that came with trying to fix someone, go big or go home. Put yourself up for getting broken or dream on of fixing them. Walk away and the damage was multiples of that you thought would occur. No one walked away from ‘damage’ unscathed, no matter how convincing your act was, your pain spoke volumes louder than your charade.

Be it because you would rather have them broken than risking breaking yourself, be it an unintentional mistake. But which was worse, having a broken piece get shattered into more pieces, or risking the breaking of a jeopardized piece while seeing its future in the reflections of the sharp broken shards of glass? Changkyun thought it was by far worse when the shards already had your blood on them in spite of how many times you had unconsciously walked on them, in spite of how much genuine effort you had put into the times you tried to get the smithereens to piece together again.

But somehow, as a person who tried to fix people, Changkyun broke others along the way. He had blood on his hands.

 

It was the twenty-fourth.

He was in his bed reading a book. Changkyun heard some mumbling coming from outside. He tried to listen for a while but it proved to be hard. It seemed to be some kind of an argument carried out by a voice so lamenting that his insides clawed at their walls. It had ended up with a firm _‘go away’_.

Changkyun opened the window and looked beneath him.

There was the owner of the tormented voice.

He was sitting on the fire-escape, looking up at the sky and absent-mindedly toying with something in the palm of his hand. In the reflections of the city-lights, it was impossible not to notice how much resignation his sunken eyes exhibited. He looked too young to sport such a weary expression.

When he had inclined with the upper part of his body backwards until he was lying flat on his back while his legs dangled down, Changkyun noticed it was the same boy he had run into on his way out of the hospital. Seemingly, he could label him as the most recent person to receive one of his ‘anonymous messages’.

The boy didn’t see him for his eyes were closed. And they remained closed for more than Changkyun could count.

“Just leave already.” Changkyun heard him say. Something felt hurt at the statement, but he decided not to wallow in his pain for a second longer.

“Hey,” he called out. “I'm Lim Changkyun. I only moved here recently,” he could see the boy’s eyes flutter open, all wide Changkyun questioned it was physically possible to open one’s eye that wide. “I hope we can get along.”

The words tasted familiar, resting comfortably on his tongue and falling easily on his ears. Perhaps he had already had this conversation with him before, perhaps the boy would think Changkyun was trying at a lame joke; perhaps Changkyun would tell him the truth.

“Are you trying to be funny?” the boy asked without getting up.

Changkyun laughed and he hoped he could pull it off, not to sound awkward for the matter.

The boy was staring at him for a long while. Changkyun liked the way his eyes bore into him; they weren’t shy and they weren’t hesitant, they were intense and unafraid. The boy sighed and shut down his eyes. The look Changkyun saw in his companion’s eyes suggested he had either seen everything he closed his eyes and shut out his mind, or that he had seen nothing he was afraid of what might come. “You don’t remember?” it was a whisper that he felt eating away at his heart.

Changkyun shivered.

“Can I confess something to you?” he said after a while of staring at the dark starless night that would soon be filled with colourful smokes contrasting with the nature of both of their blue feelings.

“What is wrong with you?” it was sharper than he wished the boy’s tone would sound like.

He laughed without putting his soul into it. “That is what I was about to tell you,” Changkyun said and when he looked down to get a clear look of his face, he decided to ask him something different first. “Can you weigh a human soul?”

Changkyun could swear he had seen the boy flinch before he closed his eyes once again. And through his heavily shut eye-lids his response came no less heavy with its weight thousands of times heavier on Changkyun's heart –the words were leaving trails of his breath white and traceable in the cold air, exhibiting his sorrow. “I don't know about a soul, but I'm sure you can weigh a heart. Or it can weigh you down.”

For a second, Changkyun considered jumping the storey difference and kissing him.

Two days ago, he didn’t care about his lost memories, now that he thought it could involve this young boy, there was nothing he wouldn’t give just so he could remember. He was simply talking to him and there he was thinking he desperately wanted to kiss him; something Changkyun hadn’t thought of in a long, long time.

He nodded then said, “I've not told anyone this and I don’t plan on doing so. The car accident I was involved in caused me to lose more than just some blood. I can't remember the last six months of my life, more or less.”

Instead of a sharp gasp or a laugh or anything that would indicate the boy had known him in that clouded period of Changkyun's life came a clenched fist and a trial at sealing off his eyes even more tightly.

After a few beats of weary silence, the boy finally opened his eyes and Changkyun was blessed with a smile that both, slayed and thrilled his heart.

“Uhm, you sure you don’t know me?” Changkyun asked, giving him a smile of his own while he rested his head on the back of his hand.

The boy didn’t miss a beat. “You're my neighbour.”

Could one really lie without telling a lie?

Changkyun started coughing. It hurt his head to do so.

“I'm sorry about your head.” He said just in time Changkyun was seeing a cat leap into the boy’s lap.

“Thanks. I saw you the other day at the hospital, were you there for a checkup?” He was trying to hold a conversation with him because Changkyun didn’t want him to go just yet.

The sound his ear registered was something Changkyun knew he would never forget no matter how long he lived. It was acidic and it scorched his eardrums.

When he was done laughing, he had said, “Yea, a checkup.” He stroked the cat then got up to his feet with the onset of the first firework breaking into the sky. “Merry Christmas, doc.” He said then disappeared into his room.

Changkyun didn’t recall telling him he was a doctor. He also forgot to ask about his name.

 

 

Life had a funny way of managing things, the way it played timing off was what ticked Changkyun off the most. You could be trying so hard to act normal, to have your hands full on doing something and your mind busy with thoughts of that thing yet life had to smack you with a coincidence … just when you were doing so well avoiding a problem. The problem would always pop up unannounced and demand to be acknowledged.

During the first ten days after his incident, Changkyun would go to work. He would meet up with Jooheon or some other friend, perhaps even his father. None of them had noticed anything about the time-gap his memory was experiencing, probably because nothing had triggered the suspicion whereas their talks never drifted anywhere near those six months. As though they never really took place, as though they were insignificant.

He couldn’t talk to anyone and he couldn’t vie for that feeling that never parted with him. He couldn’t testify that he needed those memories back because they mattered. And because he couldn’t explain why he felt so strongly and so confidently about the importance of a time that nobody seemed to show the need of pursuing, he started becoming more restless.

Sometimes, his silent prayers would be answered in the weirdest possible forms.

During the second week, his head would start frequenting that agonizing pain that blinded him; spasms of jolting electricity coursing through his veins and all the way to his brain. Changkyun would keep seeing _his_ face, but nothing concrete. Sometimes his voice would fill his mind, other times, it was music. He wished he had one solid connection.

Changkyun wanted that pain to stop. He needed it to go on forever.

He got that feeling that something was so treasurable he didn’t want to share it with anyone; that was how he felt about those memories. And ironically, instead of seeking help, he decided he would never be able to confide anyone in on how he lost a precious part of his life.

Just when the second week of January was dying, life had given him an early birthday present and arranged a meeting for Changkyun and _him_.

Close to midnight, he was leisurely hanging in a hub all by himself. He couldn’t tell how long he had been there, but during his stay Changkyun hadn’t noticed _his_ presence and he couldn’t aver if the boy could say the same thing about him. It wasn’t until Changkyun had stepped out of the hub and into the cold night that he had seen him.

“Hey,” Changkyun called out. The boy had just set his feet into motion, being two feet ahead of Changkyun. He couldn’t tell for a fact if the latter had the slight hesitation in turning around. Changkyun jogged the distance when he ignored his calling out to him two more times.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked, tone ice-sharp and eyes no less sharper.

“You're going home, right? I thought we could walk together.” Changkyun tried a casual smile.

He jeered, muttering something under his breath about the word home. “Would you just leave me alone?” it didn’t sound like a question. He didn’t bother waiting for Changkyun's reply nonetheless for he was already turning on his heels.

Almost instinctively, Changkyun caught him by the arm, at which the latter had instantly –and not gently- jerked it away while turning sharply to him. The boy didn’t speak, his eyes simply shot so many severely-edged silent words Changkyun contemplated budging.

“Did-” Changkyun couldn’t find the words, too late to back down now, he cleared his throat and tried again, “Did I do something to you?” For the first time since he had lost his memory, Changkyun entertained the thought that it wasn’t a cordial relation he had with the boy. And it wasn’t the lack of a relation either. Rather it was a very unfriendly one because of something that happened between them; something Changkyun could have probably done.

He was laughing. Shaking his head and laughing, and Changkyun felt like screaming.

The boy took two quick strides in his direction, pointing his finger at Changkyun's chest and jabbing it as he spoke through clenched teeth. “You must have lost your senses as well as your memories in that crash.”

“You can help me out here, all I want is to remember,” desperate came Changkyun's reply. Looking at his hard face, Changkyun had to add. “Look, if I hurt you, I'm sorry-”

He cut him off and even more sharply he hissed, “Don’t you apologize for something you don’t know. Don’t feign knowing anything when you just can't remember.”

Changkyun didn’t get that guy. “You told me you didn’t know me, and now you’re angry with me because I can't remember?”

Steadily looking at Changkyun, he didn’t waste a second after listening to his words. He pushed Changkyun and the latter was more taken aback by the thought and not the brute force. “I'm not angry at what you can't remember. I'm angry because you’re an idiot. I don’t have to know you when you irritate me so much.”

“Did we or did we not know each other?” it was more or less a shout, Changkyun already felt like losing it.

He could see the rough rise-and-fall of the boy’s heaving chest –he could see his enraged eyes and he could see the deliberateness of his words. “We did not.”

Changkyun took a deep breath and walked closer to him. “Then why do I feel like we did?”

“News flash, but people can be wrong more often than not.” He didn’t sound any calmer despite the sarcasm in his words.

“Why are you so angry with me?” Changkyun could detect the desperate tone that came out like a plea.

This time when the boy laughed, he ended up covering his face with his hand that by the end of it Changkyun couldn’t tell whether he was laughing or crying. “I'm sorry I'm so angry, but right now I don’t have the luxury of controlling my emotions.”

Changkyun reached out his hand to touch the boy’s shoulder, and roughly, the latter pushed it away. “I just want you to leave me alone, is that too much to ask?”

Changkyun fixed him in his gaze. Changkyun wasn’t angry; he was just frustrated so he looked the boy deep in the eye. “It’s impossible to be this angry with someone for no reason, something is hurting you.” He could see the boy’s fists clench.

“Is that why you won't just let it go? I assure you pity is the last thing I need from you or anyone.”

The more he looked at him, the more Changkyun thought it wasn’t possible to harbour so much sadness. Grief and anger, pain and anger, sorrow and anger, love and anger, hate and anger, sex and anger. Anger was the complementary colour we, humans, shielded ourselves with. Because anger was the least personal feeling of them all. “I'm sorry I irritate you so much, I just hoped we could get along.”

“You wouldn’t want to get along with someone as miserable as I am.”

The way he just said everything with so much casualness when it wasn’t a shout was plain painful.

“Sadness is state of mind. It’ll go away.”

He was saying something in a very low voice that Changkyun didn’t catch the words. He doubted he ever wanted to hear them.

“I'm either making or breaking you.” Changkyun found himself whispering and he wasn’t sure from where those words came out, but nothing had ever felt so true.

He was laughing, this was nearly hysterical. Once again, Changkyun tried to put his hand on his shoulder, he tried to assure him. But this time the boy backed away, still too aggressive but this time his eyes weren’t on Changkyun, they were pointed at the ground as he defensively hugged himself with one hand.

“Don’t. Just don’t. Go home to your life and forget about my existence. Carry on with your life like this never happened,” he was saying, his voice growing quieter and quieter. “Like I never existed.”

Lim Changkyun had learnt the hard way that sometimes it was a wise thing to let go. And Changkyun didn’t go after him when he turned and walked away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh sweet amnesia, a writer's bff  
> I want to say alot of shit about this //motions vaguely in the air/ this whole thing but it'll end up with a rant so I'll just sum it up in: 'I'm sorry, idk what I'm doing either' but maybe you guys would soon tell me  
> //sigh  
> anyhoe, I hope you can enjoy the second part tho


	8. Darkcyan

 

 

For a whole week Changkyun made a habit of watching his neighbour, whose name he once knew, in silence. For a whole a week, it looked the same to him. Despite the days sequencing, despite the same music piece played before it was abruptly stopped, everything was the same. His neighbour would be sitting on the fire-escape, dangling his legs and moving them as the wind pleased while his hands clutched to the bars of the banister and the same distant look never parted with his world-weary face. Sometimes, Changkyun would hear him talking to someone. Other times, he would have the small bottle Changkyun realized was some medicine.

Changkyun had run into him three times, and none of the encounters held more words than his two hands could count. There was a not-so-small part of Changkyun telling him his neighbour had been conscious of him and deliberately trying to avoid him. It wasn’t hard since Changkyun wasn’t around much and neither was the boy. Usually, Changkyun would have been more persistent, but something about the whole situation always managed to talk him out of talking to his neighbour. He feared he could ruin something he didn’t yet start.

On the sixth day of the new year, Changkyun didn’t care whether or not he saw him.

When Changkyun first started reading poetry, he had in vain tried to write some of his own. But he failed because he could never be consistent and it always seemed he thought faster than his pen could keep up with that the outcome could only be labeled as comical. Then when he grew older, he tended to mix up verses his way, taking some from here, other from there and coming up with one solid prose that fitted how he perceived art.

And he was back at it.

Changkyun had filled a page before he carelessly laid his pen on the paper, carelessly enough that the wind blew his paper away and caused the pen to fall down. At the loud bang of two metals colliding, his neighbour looked upwards. Out of all the nights, this had to happen tonight; when the boy’s emotional gradient was in the danger zone. Albeit he hadn’t spoken all night, his body radiated enough anger and frustration.

When he looked at Changkyun, the latter felt like an ellipse, hesitant and unfinished. A word that lingered on the tip of your tongue. A feeling relenting at the circular edge of your heart. A thought slipping into oblivion.

“Why do you have to be this persistent?” he asked in a voice Changkyun thought was attempting at being flat.

He laughed. That guy should have seen him in his persistent-glory, he was sure to take that back. “Because you're avoiding me and you know my secret.”

He nodded and looked away. Even jabbing didn’t work with him.

“You’re not very talkative, are you?” Again, Changkyun could hear the frustration evident in his very own voice; he felt like he would never reach him.

“What do you want to talk about, politics or life-philosophies?” The boy snapped, throwing his hands up in the air.

“Second chances.”

That got his attention. He stood with his back to the banister and face raised to Changkyun. Changkyun could see he was trying not to think about his words too much. “Do I look like someone who believes in second chances?” it was rhetorical.

Lim Changkyun had a bad habit of never leaving a question unanswered. “You look like someone who hardly believes in anything.” He couldn’t tell what gave him the confidence he heard implicit in his words.

The boy clicked his tongue. Changkyun could see his eyes taking a dangerous shade.

“I hear voices in my head.” He said steadily.

“Don’t we all.” Changkyun shot back.

“I could have caused the crash you ended up in.”

He didn’t have to think about this one. “You don’t look like someone who would hurt a fly, not to mention a person.”

“I killed lots of people … you don’t know me.”

The boy wasn’t smiling and Changkyun didn’t know why he was doing this. “Are you trying to push me away?”

“I don't know, is it working?” his tone was still as flat as it was at the beginning of that night.

“No.” Changkyun shrugged.

His eyes narrowed even more, then he held up his medicine bottle and rattled it. “I'm an addict.”

Changkyun tilted his head to get a good look at his face and to try to manage his expression at this bad joke. “You might be addicted to pushing people away, but certainly not drugs.” Again, he found a piece of the truth.

“You don’t know me.” The boy emphasized after a beat of silence.

“I wish I could say the same about you.”

He looked away instantly. Changkyun’s angle didn’t allow him to take a good look at his face.

“You like writing, right?” he took a step forward, holding up the long-fallen pen. “Let me tell you this story and tell me what you think of it. There had once been a boy who never had someone by his side. Then it happens that life decides to cut him some slack and give him some happiness towards the end of his timeline. And someone barges into his life, making it better, almost making him believe in miracles, but the boy just had to fuck his life up like he usually does.”

Before Changkyun could start projecting on his words, he had asked, “What is the ending to this story?”

“I _don’t_ know.” The boy hissed.

Next thing Changkyun knew, he was jumping out of the window and landing next to him, standing in front of him. The boy looked unfazed and Changkyun was glad his head wasn’t bandaged anymore. However, images tried to intrude his vision.

“I'm a doctor, not a novelist.” Changkyun grinned.

On ignoring him, the boy took a step backwards, spun around and sat the same way he always did.

Changkyun sat beside him. His shoulder brushed the boy’s and the latter didn’t react. It felt familiar; Changkyun knew he had touched him before. There was something the boy wasn’t telling him.

_We weren’t merely neighbours._

“You ever wondered why every story ends when the couple gets together?” he marveled in a low voice, staring forward, his voice was no longer hollow and his face was no longer made of wax; it was wax-poetic. “It’s because nothing lies beyond that. If anything could prevail later, it’ll be the ordinary; the boring. Maybe even the bad ending, no one wants to know that … it just ends.”

“Just because it ends, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth living.”

Changkyun wasn’t telling a joke, yet there was the boy laughing the life out of him. He was laughing so hard he ended up flat on his back and his hand ended up on his face, covering it. His laughter died down and his body was as still as the night; his forearm didn’t move to reveal his face. Changkyun guessed he was holding back too many feelings.

“Which do you think is harder, holding on or letting go?” he asked.

That was probably the hardest question Changkyun had ever faced. “In a way, I think both are equally painful.”

They fell into the murky silence.

“Look at me,” Changkyun softly said as he leaned back and rolled onto his side, to face the boy who still covered his face. He was right; there was a tear slipping against his cheek and beneath his forearm.

“Some weeks ago,” he began, ignoring Changkyun's plea. Changkyun who almost reached out and touched his hand but Changkyun also didn’t trust himself enough to touch him. “I asked someone what they thought of love; if they considered it a hinder. Come to think of it, I, myself, had a definition that could only coincide with theirs.” He sniffed quietly. “They had told me the misconception of thinking it means to forge two alien hearts into one, as though with time and by growing closer their hearts would merge into a stronger more malleable one. The punchline is that however passion you pour, however will you demonstrate, it's always two hearts and not one ... of two different people.”

He stopped abruptly and Changkyun could swear so did his heart. The boy removed his hand and turned his face to the side. Changkyun could see his hair falling on his eyes, he could see the painful contrast of colours against his pale skin. Changkyun could see the bottomless eyes that kept sinking in their sockets.

“There was one aspect they didn’t cover: what happened when it ended.”

“What’s with you and endings?” Changkyun found himself asking.

He gave a short laugh then said, “Probably the same thing with you and promises.”

_Are we really strangers?_

He rubbed his eyes, smiling sadly to himself. “They might click and struggle to fit but if that happened, when they unclench, the casualties skyrocket. Sometimes one of them forgets how it was to live with one heart and the other grows into thinking he owned both so as he leaves, he takes a piece he isn't entitled to. And each suffers.” His voice dropped in pitch at the last part.

This was exactly why Changkyun preferred anonymous messages. It didn’t involve all this aftermaths. He wouldn’t be faced with this moral dilemma. He was scared of asking anything, he was scared of all kinds of answers; even the ones present in the silence.

The boy wasn’t brittle with pain, it didn’t make him stronger either. He was, just was.

“And you know the worst part of it was that they take my good memories along with everything else. They leave me with hollowness too deep for words but too empty for feelings.”

Changkyun would have preferred vanishing into thin air than to have gone through the last few minutes of his life. Maybe the past six months had a lot of moments like this that he should be grateful he couldn’t remember them.

“I-” Changkyun could hardly start when he was cut midsentence.

“Please don’t.” The boy shook his head, wiped the fallen tears with his sleeve, got up and shook his head again as he looked at Changkyun who was straightening up.

“Don’t what?” he asked, utterly flabbergasted, thoroughly hurt and definitely unfulfilled he almost came out too strongly. He was in the dark on that one that he didn’t know the least bit about what to do.

“Don’t promise me anything.” He smiled. He was turning on his heels, leaving Changkyun behind.

“Why are you always walking out on me?” Changkyun asked, heart full of pain and words full of hurt.

Again, he was laughing at something Changkyun didn’t intend to be remotely funny. “Well, here’s a tip for an easier life, doc. If life had a door, walk the fuck out.”

When Changkyun only incredulously looked at him, he had added, “Goodnight, doc.” And slipped into his room, closing the window and turning off the lights.

For minutes, Changkyun kept staring at where the boy had been standing. He could hear the resonation of his goodbye; he could hear him twice in two parallel lines. One that was said with a bitter smile and another that was saturated with a genuine one.

Changkyun could clearly picture his handwriting, the words still burning in his memory.

_I caused it._

_  
_

 

  

Changkyun used to wonder how people overcame embarrassing situations. The answer was simple, they pretended it didn’t happen.

On the third day after Changkyun’s failure at boding with him, the music had been cut before the piece was finished.

He wasn’t left to muse on it for too long; in less than ten minutes, Changkyun had heard a knock on his door.

He opened the door only to come face to face with he who he expected and she who he wished he wouldn’t be seeing so soon.

“Hi.” Yeri said, beaming at Changkyun. He spared her a glance then looked at his neighbour; he was actually having a phantom of a smile on his lips as he stood, hands in pocket, by Yeri’s side. “I confused your room and Kihyun-sshi here insisted on coming with me to show me your room.”

Changkyun had reached two facts by the end of her statement. One, the face now had a name and it was Kihyun. Two, she was lying.

“Why aren’t you dressed yet?” she asked, her smile fading for the briefest second.

Changkyun wished his confusion wasn’t too noticeable. Before he could reply, Kihyun had spoken.

“Over a month ago you promised you’d have dinner with Yeri-sshi at their house.” Kihyun was speaking casually but he gave Changkyun a meaningful look.

Thankfully, her phone buzzed and when she had checked the text, she declared he had to hurry because her brother was waiting for them down there.

“Just get ready already, I’ll be down.” She pushed Changkyun gently back into his room and tried to close the door. Changkyun laughed nervously and held the door open, watching her leap the stairs. Kihyun was about to excuse himself but Changkyun had already pulled him inside the room, closing the door behind him and blocking his path.

Lim Changkyun had had enough with how everything stood and he had decided to act upon that conviction.

His hand barricaded Kihyun whose both hands were behind his back which was glued to the door. Changkyun was standing too close, yet Kihyun was looking directly into his eyes. Changkyun gave him credit for that; had it been him, he would have probably avoided eye contact.

And at this physical proximity, Changkyun found he was breathing heavily; he could hear Kihyun inhaling.

“You seem well informed about my schedule for just a neighbour.” Changkyun breathed out, looking at Kihyun's eyes then at his lips.

“I just happened to be there.” Kihyun took on the same hushed quality of Changkyun's voice, only that it was much sweeter.

“Just like you happened to be here now?” normally, Changkyun would have added a momentary smirk to this but again, he was solely focusing on Kihyun's lips and somehow trying not to have his head explode. “What’s your story, Yoo Kihyun?”

As soon as the name left his mouth, he found what he assumed was his expression replicated on Kihyun’s face. Shock, fear, anticipation; at times like that, telling those three apart was like trying to tell exactly where the sky ended and the sea began.

“Why don’t we see how much you can unravel about me without me telling you?” He was surprised to learn Kihyun had that playful smile in him.

“What if what I forgot was something important?” maybe he shouldn’t have said that.

Kihyun scoffed. “Do you think you’d forget something really important?”

“Do you ever answer any questions?”

Kihyun laughed, a fruity uplifting sound. However, if Kihyun hadn’t been blocking the distance between Changkyun's head and the door, Changkyun would have probably banged his very own head against the door.

“What is it that you think you forgot?”

Changkyun sighed. “I don't know … but something is missing.”

Kihyun gave him a stern stare then the corner of his mouth quirked up, a lopsided smile. “You wouldn’t miss something you forgot existed.”

Changkyun let it drop at that because he felt mentally defeated. He was showing a lot of self-restraint, keeping the distance that separated their faces for the matter. Giving Kihyun's lips one last glance, Changkyun dropped his arms to his sides. He couldn’t decide on what kind of smiles Kihyun had flashed him before leaving his room.

 

 

 

Dinner wasn’t catastrophic. It went fine and fortunately, he refrained from hurting other people.

Changkyun looked at the building where he was living, he didn’t want to go in there, not in that state. He walked till he had reached the alley and against the dirty ground, he ended up lying.

He tried to level his breathing, to remember just to breathe for the matter. Changkyun hated slipping into that lowly state of mind; he hated feeling petty. But he just wished people were as careful about other people’s feeling like he was. At least, reciprocate it by being passive. He wished he had a normal relation with his father; he wished his father were more flexible, more adaptable, less rigid and less volatile.

He wasn’t doing well on the breathing part; it was either he burst into tears, or he burst with rage.

He chose a third option: he vented. It wasn’t until he had kicked the comparatively smaller trash bin, it wasn’t until his foot was throbbing in objection and it wasn’t until he felt the muffled scream burning at the back of his throat that he heard a laugh he recognized all too well.

Changkyun heard some rustling, a body hitting various metal bodies as it tried to reach its destination, and some laughs along the way with every bang. He could see the skeleton covered with human flesh staggering from the other end of the alley, hardly keeping its balance.

It didn’t stop until a foot separated them.

The hair was unmistakable; the voice was unmistakable; the attitude was unmistakable. Changkyun needn’t see his face to aver the fact it was Yoo Kihyun.

“Who would have thought you, too, could end up in a place like this.” Kihyun put his hand on Changkyun's shoulder. He reeked of more than simply alcohol. His knees looked like they would crumble any second and he seemed to have enough lucidity to realize this simple fact, so he fell to the ground voluntarily and gestured for Changkyun to follow suit. “Sit, sit, it’s such a lovely night tonight.”

At least, he wasn’t laughing.

Changkyun sat with his back to the wall and head lolled back. He couldn’t help thinking how ironic this was.

“I’ve never seen you like this and I have to give it to you, you break down quite neatly.” Kihyun remarked as he lolled his foot to both sides in front of them.

“Say, Kihyun, do you think I am a bad person?”

There were times when you were done pretending. Being strong all the time took toll on one’s mentality you just had to let go at some point. Sometimes Changkyun questioned whether being the emotional pillar for everyone, people often forgot that he, too, was human. And sometimes he needed reassuring words; maybe even pseudo words.

He was sniggering, or chuckling, Changkyun couldn’t tell. “Would my answer make a difference?”

Changkyun snorted, not at his reply, but at the stupidity of everything. “Maybe. I don't know.”

“No, you’re not. Not in the least.” It was quiet; it was sweet; it was the best.

He could hardly keep his tears back. Changkyun was bottled up; he needed this yet he didn’t let way to his tears. And it hurt.

“Family is shit, buddy,” Kihyun was using some tone Changkyun knew was the base of the joke and he punched Changkyun’s shoulder lightly. Changkyun felt himself smiling. Even when he was drunk, even when he looked and felt like shit, Kihyun was trying to make him feel better.

“You know, when my mother died, I felt like my dad was all that was left for me in the world,” Changkyun began; perhaps he had told him this before, perhaps he hadn’t. Either way, Kihyun let him talk; he needed this. “And it really hurt when he blew me off. It still does. And I just can't help the feeling. I want him to love me, I want him to be there for me, I want him to tell me it’s okay. But that’s never the case.”

Changkyun clamped his mouth shut. He didn’t look at Kihyun; he knew he was listening. And frankly speaking, he wished he didn’t have to burden Kihyun with his problem. He wished Kihyun would forget by the morning.

A small part of him wished Kihyun wouldn’t.

Jooheon’s image flashed before his eyes. He almost laughed.

Everyone longed to be understood by at least one person. But what if it wasn’t reciprocated? What if you didn’t want to burden someone with your baggage because you were half sure they wouldn’t offer carrying it in a blue moon, or maybe you were never certain if they would be able to carry it? Or maybe because you knew you didn’t mean to them as much as they meant to you. Eventually, you find the dependency shamefully humbling as it addressed your insecurities and started the parasitic feast on your soul.

“Today, it was the first time I stood up for myself when it came down to him. I couldn’t help it; I knew I was bound to explode someday. I knew I should have practiced what I preached. I told him that just because he was my father, it didn’t mean he was impeccable –that everyone was bound to make mistakes, himself as no exception. I told him that I was willing to say I was sorry, to forgive and forget, to move on. But only if he admitted he was mistaken, that it was not only _my_ mistake.”

“Someone once told me I should never apologize for the way I am.” Kihyun said sympathetically. Not the kind of pitiable sympathy that you felt you didn’t need, but the sympathy that let you know there was a still a place for you in this world because we were all struggling to fit in.

He smiled feebly. “I was scared. I embraced the fall, awaiting the amiss but it never came, which made things by far worse.”

Kihyun didn’t respond verbally or physically for a few beats. Then Changkyun heard him shift next to him and the next thing he knew was Kihyun holding his head between both of his hands and in the dark cold night, Kihyun's eyes pierced into his soul. Lim Changkyun felt utterly naked.

“Look, I don't know if this would mean anything to you, but you should know this. You shouldn’t let your happiness depend on anyone. You’re a free spirit that can wander anywhere, anytime, and would never have to feel bad or sorry about being itself. There are people out there who are grateful you were born.”

As Kihyun spoke, Changkyun felt as though he were slowly losing his form. He would have stood by and watched wars convulsing the world and not done a thing should it mean staying in this deplorable place forever with this pure soul that wasn’t afraid of getting tainted as it held him.

He let go of Changkyun's face after a few seconds of more staring into his soul. He muttered something about how stupid Changkyun's father was for not appreciating the ‘gift’ he had been blessed with. Lim Changkyun couldn’t control his smile at that side-comment.

He could feel the peripheral weight of Kihyun's head on his shoulder. He could feel Kihyun's hair tingling his neck as the air teased it.

Kihyun suddenly bopped Changkyun’s head, the latter was startled then his face melted into a smile when he saw Kihyun puffing out his cheek. “Smile. You look better when you’re smiling.”

And indeed, Changkyun smiled. It felt easy.

“You’re too drunk.”

Kihyun laughed. “Maybe it’s simpler that way, living life with its every moment justified as ‘because I'm drunk.’ Drunken honesty, you know.” He was laughing at some inside joke at the last part.

“I can kiss you right now and say it was because I'm drunk.” Changkyun joked. But then again, all you needed to see everyone’s true colours was to hear them joking; because people always spoke the truth as long as it was masked as a joke, as long as they knew they were safe.

Kihyun shifted next to him, he couldn’t read the boy’s expression. “Why would you want to kiss me?” it sounded like a very philosophical question the way Kihyun had phrased it.

“How many reasons are out there?” again, Changkyun found another piece of truth.

He was feasting his eyes with the sight of Kihyun laughing to the extent of having tears in his eyes. Kihyun slapped Changkyun’s chest playfully while wiping his tear away. “Little do you know, doc, little do you know.”

The silence was their third companion.

Changkyun was in no shape to be able to read Kihyun's emotions yet it didn’t stop him from venturing a question, “So what brings you here?”

Contrary to the feathery laugh seconds ago, Changkyun's ears greeted another low sneer. “Because I had come to realize this was an okay place to fall apart.”

He looked at Kihyun and he was overcome by this protective urge to shield Kihyun's delicate skin from the harsh air surrounding it. Changkyun wanted to know everything about him, he wanted to know what ticked him off, what triggered his tears; things that made his eyes form crescents when he smiled while other things made his eyes nearly close. He wanted to know all of Kihyun's favourite things; whether he was ticklish, his views on life, whether he thought vegetarians were idiots or complete idiots. He wanted to know his darkest thoughts, his worst times; Changkyun wanted to know what sustained Yoo Kihyun when he fell apart.

“Let me tell you this because I probably won't remember telling you such tomorrow morning so I won't really regret it.” The laughter was no longer present in Kihyun's tone. “But I'm also here because I'm an idiot and was hoping you’re just as idiotic.”

Smiling, Changkyun asked, “Did I pass?”

He didn’t catch what Kihyun had mumbled under his breath, he only caught two words: ‘wish’ and ‘remember’.

“I break down, therefore I am.” Kihyun joked. And honestly, that set Changkyun off.

When he calmed down, he got lost staring at Kihyun. Kihyun seemed indifferent about his stare at first but then he had cracked a smile and asked, “What?”

“I don't know.” Changkyun lied. “I just like your audacity for some reason.”

What probably came out was a chuckle had it not turned into a cough. “I'm not as scared anymore.”

He didn’t want to speak; Changkyun didn’t want to ruin how sanguine that sentence sounded.

“Maybe I could believe in second chances after all,” Kihyun said with heavy-lidded eyes and a yawn.

Changkyun stared at him, contemplating proceeding loudly with his thoughts. “I know you told me not to promise you anything, but I intend to make you believe in a lot of things, in miracles, too.”

It was Kihyun's turn to break into laughter. Changkyun wondered if this was enough to chase away the sorrow just as much as it had done with his sleepiness.

When Kihyun calmed down, he had laid his head on Changkyun's lap and curled his body slightly. He reminded Changkyun of a cat. Changkyun's left hand was beneath Kihyun's cheek and he could feel the moist tear hitting it.

“Why are you crying, come on, don’t cry.” Changkyun poked his cheek while he whispered into his ear. This man with a child’s heart could only be reached this way. To establish a bond with his inner child.

“Those are happy tears,” Kihyun's voice started getting drunk with sleep again. “I'm just really happy right now.”

That night, Changkyun was sure Kihyun was the safest haven he could ever know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what a happy chapter...  
> don't get used to that tho //winks


	9. Limegreen

 

 

Changkyun was knocking on Kihyun’s window. He was crouched down, blowing air against the window while rubbing his gloved hands together. It was chilly and his coat wasn’t doing much to warm him.

Kihyun showed up by the door upon Changkyun’s seventh knock on his window, after his knees and back had complained in spite of the uncomfortable crouch. Kihyun leveled him with a steady stare without opening the window, both of his hands were around a hot drink. Changkyun smiled then shrunk into his muffler again, pouting a bit at Kihyun’s lukewarm reaction.

“Open up,” he tried not to let the momentary hurt dim the horizon.

Kihyun put down his drink, walked till he had reached the window and after staring at Changkyun for a whole minute, in which the latter was utterly unnerved, he had finally opened the window.

“Good evening, neighbour.” Kihyun greeted him with a lopsided smile.

“Hello. Are you going to leave me here for long?” Changkyun asked, tilting his head.

Kihyun pondered. He looked over his shoulder then back at Changkyun. “I don't know, are you here because you want to come in?”

“Well,” Changkyun let out a small laugh to hide his embarrassment, “if you leave me out here in the cold, my lungs and heart won't take it and I might die.” He rubbed his hands again but he shivered this time, providing some spontaneous credibility to his statement.

“Give me one reason I should let you in.” Kihyun wasn’t smiling; he was looking at Changkyun with an indiscernible expression.

Changkyun’s lips parted for a fraction of a second, his heart hammering for what seemed longer. And with equal clarity and conviction, he found his lips formulating the truest of all reasons. “Isn’t the possibility of me dying enough?”

Kihyun's expression softened and his eyes were suddenly downcast, further hindering Changkyun from being able to read his emotions. He took a step backwards and made space for Changkyun who was instantly inside of Kihyun's apartment.

The room he was in was probably colder than the outside. Changkyun tried not to shudder, his mind drifting to all what this impersonal apartment entailed. It was a mess, regardless, it seemed hardly inhabited. There were no photos or portraits, no personal touch-up and hardly any source of lightening; empty walls were all there was.

“Can you get dressed? I need advice on something so I'm borrowing you for the day.” Changkyun was talking to Kihyun’s back. Kihyun who wasn’t doing anything seen to Changkyun yet he gave the latter his back.

“Are you asking me or informing me?”

Changkyun smiled despite his frustration. “Yoo Kihyun, please go out with me.”

When Kihyun turned around, there was a phantom of a smirk tugging at his lips and a daring look sparkling in his eyes. “Sounds like a proposal.”

Changkyun laughed heartily this time. It felt right.

He leaned his back against the window using his hands to support his weight.

Kihyun disappeared into one of the rooms and shut the door. “You’re not asking any questions, doc.”

Changkyun was staring at the ceiling meters-too-low; he watched the chandelier dance as the wind raced by. “I’m guessing I've asked you all the questions I needed before. So I'm doing as you advised, figuring you out on my own, that is.”

“I have a question for you then.” Kihyun’s voice was momentarily far-away and Changkyun’s eye were suddenly fixated on the door to the room which Kihyun was in.

“Do you believe the person who broke you isn’t the one who should fix you?”

Involuntarily, Changkyun found himself smiling. Despite the handful of emotions Yoo Kihyun had just thrown at him, he found something inexplicably attractive about the boy’s mentality, however dark and tormented. Wrong, it was because it was so dark and tormented.

“Let me put it this way,” Changkyun started taking off his gloves, “According to you, Yoo Kihyun, what has once been broken can only get more damaged, yes or no?”

Decisively came the reply. “Yes.”

Changkyun smiled, after all, he had predicted the answer. “So, as you're fixated on fixing someone, they go through a phase of naked vulnerability similar to that of a recuperation; meaning one wrong move and they’ll regress worse than the original time.” By the end of his sentence, his bare hand was halfway reaching to knock on Kihyun's door. “So unless you’re familiar with how that person reached this level of brokenness, you might as well have filed their death-certificate. Because you won't be condemning the present moment alone, but also their entire future.”

Kihyun had opened the door, and like that, he was standing face to face with Changkyun who wouldn’t budge. When he spoke, Kihyun’s voice was quiet and breathlessly sweet. “Is that a yes or a no, doc?”

“A no. The person who broke you is the person who should fix you, as far the word can go; he who could solve the aftermaths is the only one who caused the aftermaths. You shouldn’t interfere with the left-overs of someone else.”

As the silence befell on them in the small room, Changkyun’s heartbeat was synchronized with the clock, beating very monotonously, very heavily and very loudly. There was still the same look in Kihyun’s eyes. Not just something haunting about the expression, but something piercing in his gaze, as though he were searching for something he desperately needed in Changkyun’s eyes.

“Let’s just hope you’re right, Changkyun.”

Never before had he heard his name coming out from Kihyun's lips. Never before had Changkyun felt how right his name felt on someone’s tongue.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Kihyun smiled, a sad look flashed across his face. “I’m ready, let’s go.” He said in the same shaky tone and passed Changkyun by without meeting his eyes.

 

It always amused Changkyun how people preferred summer to winter. People who always connoted words like ‘morbid’ and ‘depressing’ with winter; vexed at the fact night had a greater share which intensified the effect of the whole winter ‘atmosphere’. Most people didn’t like rain or snow because it was a hassle to go anywhere while it rained or snowed, but very few stopped to marvel. If any of those who hated snow took a single minute in their lives where they just stopped and took in their surroundings, they would no longer hate snow; they would no longer hate the majority of the things they so unjustifiably hated. But seldom ever anyone stopped; everyone was in a haste to go somewhere.

Lim Changkyun didn’t believe in ‘somewhere.’

Somewhere was a place where probably nothing happened; and while one was overlooking the short journeys heading somewhere –while they waited out the boredom of such phases, they missed out on the whole thing. So when they went back to take a look at their lives, they would realize they never once lived.

He wasn’t a fan of silence, yet as he walked next to Kihyun with their shoulders occasionally brushing, the silence didn’t feel out of place.

“Where are we going?” Kihyun asked.

“The theatre.”

Kihyun gave him a confused look which drew a full grin from him.

They were almost there anyways.

Kihyun suddenly stopped mid-stance, something across the street had caught his attention. He threw one look to his side then was about to cross the street when Changkyun caught him by the arm. There were few examples of how time noticeably stretched on a literal basis. One: during a free fall; two: that split of a second prior to pulling the trigger, and three: while watching someone on the brink of having their life stolen. Among all three, Changkyun hated the third most of all.

He wouldn’t let go of Kihyun's arm even after the latter had been safe by his side. He forced a smile and tried not to let his voice sound flat. “Please don’t be so careless.”

He had to look up because Kihyun was, surprisingly, laughing. It sounded like the saddest thing this side of the universe.

“Yea.” It was hardly audible.

Changkyun learnt long time ago that there was no point dwelling in the past. It proved healing to extend your hand to your fallen self and telling you, _‘get up, I’ll guide you through, we’re moving past this’._ A policy which on the most part was successful when the fallen person was another person but you.

He took Kihyun by the arm, heedless of the boy’s objections till they were safe on the other side of the street. They were standing before the façade of a bookstore.

“So which book was worth giving up your life for?” Changkyun jabbed.

Kihyun gave him a disbelieving look and gently pulled his hand free, pressing a smile. “Not the book of my life, obviously.”

Changkyun sighed. He turned to face Kihyun fully, Kihyun whose stature seemed to shrink all the more and blend into the stealthy night. “Why do you always think of yourself so lowly?”

Kihyun opened his mouth to reply then clamped it shut a second too fast.

And deep down, Changkyun knew the answer by heart. Because being alone sucked. It was just as bad as being forgotten. You were never fully there because nothing made you fully present in the moment, nothing to testify to your existence.

And, more than any precedent time, he realized this was exactly how he made Kihyun feel. Not only was the boy alone, but Changkyun had managed to forget him. At what cost and for what reason?

He hated himself.

So much he wanted to break down that second, at the feet of Yoo Kihyun he wanted to purge his soul clean and confess all his sins. Something was so pure about Kihyun’s soul that he wished it would rub off on him, irrespective of how Kihyun thought of himself. After all, it was a conclusion Changkyun hadn’t just reached, but rather a one deeply instilled in spite of the absence of any, however feeble, objection on his heart’s part.

At last, Kihyun turned to the bookstore. “That book.” He pointed.

Changkyun cleared his throat and looked where Kihyun's finger was pointing. “That book is boring.”

That seemed to have intrigued Kihyun. He gave Changkyun a crooked smile and asked, “What’s a boring book?”

“One that’s not completely true to reality.” Changkyun was only telling half of the truth.

Kihyun cocked an eyebrow, prompting him to talk as he motioned for them to proceed walking.

“You see, the most important part of a story is when it starts to go downhill. When things go south, you judge things disregarding the human psyche and any aspect of humane feelings; the human part.” Changkyun started explaining. He pretended he couldn’t see how amused Kihyun's expression was, in comparison to the dejected expression that seemed to never part with Kihyun’s face. “You don't get the ‘oh because they called me such’ or ‘I ignored them for days because I just felt like it’, or most importantly, ‘I'm just a stupid human being that undergoes those swing moods that can fuck up their relationship with someone but so are they.’ You get none of that. The only fights you get are Big Fights; with capital B’s and capital F’s.”

Kihyun was sighing. “They complain it's too fictional and if you show them the dark side of the nature, it becomes boring.”

“Exactly.”

Kihyun had obviously given up the thought of buying the book. Changkyun told him to round the corner. He accidentally bumped into Kihyun and he was surprised the boy had felt colder than he had thought. He slipped his hand into Kihyun's, getting yet another surprised look but no verbalized complaint. He halted, took off his muffler and wrapped it with his free hand around a stunned Kihyun.

“There you go,” he said quietly, tugging at one of the muffler’s end; he could audibly hear Kihyun’s loud breathing. “It suits your outfit more.”

Kihyun gave him a long indecipherable look as Changkyun coughed. “Why do you think people lie?”

He didn’t miss a beat, his cough interrupted. “To protect the people they love.”

“And upon what do they decide that their actions are, therefore, protecting that person?”

“Sometimes there are no other option, Kihyun.” Changkyun gave him a sad look that matched his words. “Sometimes, you think there isn’t any other option and you start working with what you have.”

“Sometimes all you have isn’t enough.”

Never before did Changkyun look away while talking to someone; but there he was, on hearing that one sentence, physically and emotionally unable to meet Kihyun’s penetrating gaze. A gaze so strong and exuding too much honesty.

Had it ever occurred to you, that there was always something unspoken between two people and more often than not it was the thing that mattered the most; what was not being said. You could speak all you want about the things that didn’t matter, that weren’t personal, because it was safe. However, whenever things started to threaten to tread on an ‘under construction’ part of your heart, you shrunk away and rebuilt your walls. You still chose to play it safe even if it meant causing more pain to the people you cared about.

At least, Changkyun thought he had outgrown the coward in him. Kihyun’s heart, which was dripping with painful sincerity, was the thing that hardened Changkyun's second skin. He couldn’t look those eyes –those beautiful eyes without hating the undeserving reflection he saw in them.

“I mean, I was someone whose whole heart could never be enough. Twice.” Kihyun laughed bitterly.

And Changkyun couldn’t find a single word he could say that could steer Kihyun clear of that pain, albeit momentarily.

He guided him into the theatre, taking seats in the middle rows. There weren’t many people, around twenty spectators of varying ages. Kihyun still looked confused.

“I thought you said we were going to the theatre,” he whispered as he sat down.

Changkyun smiled, his eyes focused on the conductor. There were four performers on stage. The topic for the night was something that went along the lines of abandonment issues and being unable to move on.

“Well, technically playback theatre is still a theatre.”

He could feel Kihyun’s searching eyes boring into him. His hand once again found its way to Kihyun's and pressed it twice; for reassurance.

“Don’t you love how you could think clearly about most things until you were faced with any of those things?” his tone was playful. Maybe that was why Kihyun smiled back, slipping his fingers between Changkyun's.

After the conductor had greeted everyone and made a small introduction, she had asked if anyone would like to volunteer.

Kihyun's hand went up. Changkyun tensed.

It had hit Changkyun, a brilliant idea he knew had been rooting itself out for so long, that morning to take Kihyun there. Nonetheless, he didn’t consider Kihyun participating. Yoo Kihyun didn’t look like someone who would share the story of his life. He knew Kihyun wasn’t that kind of person.

His eyes never left Kihyun's face as the latter walked to the stage. Albeit he was small, albeit he was cold and albeit Changkyun could sense how scared he was, having decided to take such a leap of faith, Kihyun still walked with the air of a confident proud person. A broken person.

He listened to him talk; Changkyun watched the slightest change of expression, the eye-twitches at certain words and the lips’-subtle-quivering on confirming certain statements. Kihyun's voice managed to stay steady throughout the whole recount.

Changkyun’s heart was becoming all the more wretched. He was primed to fall for that voice, so enticingly sweet while being laced with just the perfect touch of distant melancholy. A perfect kind of lamentation.

“No, I think it’s hard.” Kihyun said with a smile, his eyes meeting Changkyun's briefly then drifting back to the beautiful lady sitting next to him. “I can't overwrite the time or erase the feelings but I’ll work my way around the problem. And no, it won't go away but I’ll extend my temporary time dealing with it so it could stretch long enough; forever enough.”

Changkyun could feel the onset of tears welling up in his eyes, and he set them free.

The conductor was saying something, Changkyun was too engrossed in looking at the angelic figure; the figure that was wounded and silently weeping, accusingly so.

“…just as I got used to their presence, I’ll get used to the lack of it.” He finished and was soon heading back to his seat.

The ringing of his phone saved him from sinking further into depression; however, on seeing the caller, Yeri, Changkyun was plummeted into the same abyss –just twice the velocity this time. He wiped the tears away and forced a smile, watching his reflection on the phone-screen and making sure his eyes weren’t puffy. He didn’t snap back till Kihyun had flumped down on the seat, closing his eyes while throwing his head on Changkyun's shoulder.

Changkyun knew the gesture by heart; one that was done when you desperately needed to lock the memories away.

He watched him intently from the corner of his eye.

“There’s nothing I want more right now than to touch your heart, kiss it and tuck it away where it will be safe. So much I want to figure you out, Kihyun.”

Changkyun was smiling as he spoke, facing onwards and savouring Kihyun’s presence next to him; the weight of his head on his shoulder, the hymns his breathing was making and the slight heat emanating from his body. He had always wondered what was so wrong in wanting to understand everyone’s feelings.

“Not everything should be known, doc.” Kihyun said. He sounded far-away, a wandering soul.

Changkyun watched the performance halfheartedly as he side-hugged Kihyun who soon fell asleep.

That night, Changkyun had carried Kihyun home and tucked him in bed.

 

 

 

 

It was snowing. Changkyun had just parted with his father for the night. He had chosen to walk, having deliberately left his car where he lived; nights with his dad always made the urge to escape his very own skin very prominent. He was once again feeling worthless, as though his father’s words had a noticeable presence and their weight was more than sufficient to diminish him into nothingness.

He wouldn’t lift up his head to meet any of the snowflakes. They were too pure for him, especially in such a dreary night when his heart was enshrouded in unspeakable feelings.

White. Pure as the driven snow.

Nonsense. Utter nonsense.

His mind was struggling with images; images of galaxies and swirling colours, of entangled webs and interlaced fingers. His ears were buzzing, from the loam of his memories, he could hear the sound of deliberate pauses and loaded sighs, of fermatas and incomplete concertos, of half-truths and withheld lies. His mind couldn’t make out a single image or distinguish a single sound. Were those his memories revolting inside, raising a ruckus as to be addressed, demanding to be acknowledged despite ignoring them for longer than enough? Or were those false memories, those he wished existed?

He wasn’t awoken from his vigil until the sound of the persistent horn was able to trespass the thorny area of his mind and call him back to reality. He looked to his side and forced a smile on seeing the driver; Lee Jooheon, his very own bestfriend was the driver of the car.

“I know you got your car fixed and like hell I hope you’re not planning on walking alone in this weather.” Jooheon’s tone was teasing but Changkyun didn’t find it in him to feel warm at the thought. He probably felt colder than the fallen snow.

When Changkyun didn’t reply, Jooheon sighed and opened the passenger door, gesturing for his friend to get in.

“I don’t want to go home.” Was the first thing Changkyun had said having settled in. He spared Jooheon, whose expression suddenly turned solemn only to soon be melting into a compassionate one, a glance then he looked onwards. He sometimes thought having been able to read everyone’s emotions so well could often be to his disadvantage; sometimes he felt as though he would opt for remaining ignorant. It was safe to talk about feelings and emotions as long as they weren’t his.

“I’m not taking you home tonight, we had plans, remember?”

Albeit he was aware Jooheon’s sentence wasn’t menacing, Changkyun had to stifle the impulse to smile bitterly.

Changkyun started looking at his friend as the latter was driving. He started studying the minute details of Jooheon’s face, the subtle movements of his lips and the light reflection in his irises –Changkyun's eyes carefully traced the veins in Jooheon’s hands as the latter’s hands clutched to the steering wheel, how often they twitched beneath his moon-washed skin. Somehow, he felt a fire growing dimmer within him yet not quite being put down. And it still burnt. It still hurt.

“Hyung, are you happy?” he asked with a warm smile plastered on his face, staring at Jooheon still.

“Hmm?” Jooheon gave him a skeptic sideward glance, “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Changkyun laughed. A hollow, forced sound which passed unnoticed on Jooheon’s part.

During the short drive to the restaurant, Jooheon was talking and Changkyun made a point of never letting his smile wan. He couldn’t really hear anything Jooheon was saying albeit he was answering and asking questions.

 

While they were eating, the sound of their forks against their plates was louder than their words to Changkyun’s ears.

“I think it was a great day. I mean, even though I almost ruined our anniversary, but Hiyori was still surprised.”

Changkyun laughed, for no apparent reason. He was looking at Jooheon, wiping a tear that had lurked in his eye after his former laugh. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

Jooheon paused to get a good look at Changkyun. “You seem in really good spirits tonight.”

Changkyun laughed again, seeing Jooheon’s smile broaden. “Yea. I got the chance to see you after all.”

He sighed; it sounded as though a burden had been removed off his chest. “Seeing you right now made me relived, you know. I thought you’d be feeling unwell after the accident and all, but I'm glad my intuition was wrong.”

Changkyun pressed his lips. He felt a lump lodging itself at the back of his throat. “Yeri says hi,”

“Oh, right, were you with her earlier today?”

“Yes.” Changkyun lied, slipping a hand into his pocket and reaching for his phone. “We went jewelry hunting.”

“That’s great to-”

Before Jooheon could finish his sentence, Changkyun’s ringtone had interrupted him. Changkyun got out his phone, lifted up his finger and said, “Excuse me for a second, I have to take this.”

Changkyun was soon exiting the restaurant, followed by Jooheon’s neutral gaze. He didn’t stop until he had made sure Jooheon couldn’t see him. He tried taking deep breaths, calming himself; he threw a glance skyward, feeling his pulse quickening. He could feel the tears prickling in his eyes; his hand reached to cover his mouth as his lungs fought for air. He calmly walked till he was in a less crowded area, somewhere near an alley where only he and the snow were present.

Yes, Changkyun loved Jooheon, but right now, he needed to escape that restaurant; he needed to escape Jooheon’s presence. And there he was crying, alone, in some nameless alley.

He returned ten minutes later, making sure his eyes weren’t red and his customary smile was spread wide across his face. “Sorry, dad was being…” he put on a pensive face, “dad.”

“Well, at least you’re smiling, so guess it wasn’t that bad.” Jooheon said, getting up. Seemingly, he had already paid the check.

 _Yea, not that bad._ He only smiled back.

“Ugh, I missed your monkey face so much.” Jooheon had head-locked Changkyun playfully and started ruffling his hair. “And I sure missed your smile.”

All Changkyun could conjure up were the letters making up the phrase ‘static screams.’ Even when he bid Jooheon goodbye, even as he stood before the building where he lived, Lim Changkyun still wouldn’t go home.

He sat down at the stairs, knowing he was finally safe with no one being there to see him.

Something fell with a dull quiet thud against the pavement. Changkyun looked up.

In the cold night, he met the unmistakable pair of eyes and smiled.

“Hey, neighbour,” Kihyun began, looking down from the window. “Did you forget which floor you live on?”

Changkyun’s smile widened. “How can I forget when you’re there to remind me.”

“Smooth.”

“Not even close,” Changkyun smiled to himself then got up to his feet. “Can I ask you a question?”

Kihyun bit his lips. Even through the distance, Changkyun could see he was biting back a smart comment, perhaps having one of those wars people always have in someone’s presence while the latter was completely oblivious. “Sure.”

Changkyun took a deep breath. He didn’t have to shout over the hissing wind; something in him, perhaps an old feeling, told him Kihyun would always hear him. “Are you happy?”

“Whoa, loaded question.” Kihyun was obviously being sarcastic and it drew a frown from Changkyun. However, after a few beats of him studying Changkyun's expression, he had cleared his throat and asked, “Are _you?_ ”

He found himself forming the words before he knew it, “I'm quite content.”

And simply like that, Yoo Kihyun was hooting with laughter. Perhaps it was genuine; perhaps everything sounded hollow to Changkyun’s ears. Pretense was in the eye of the faker.

“How old are you, doc?”

Changkyun flinched. “Twenty-seven.”

Kihyun smirked. It was a new sight. “What’s your felid of expertise again?”

The image of his father ‘talking’ to him popped in his head. “I’m a cardiologist.” On seeing Kihyun look away, on thinking he had seen the phantom of a sad smile, Changkyun had to ask, “Why are you asking?”

Kihyun didn’t answer immediately, he only looked at Changkyun while his eyes glistened. Changkyun considered feeling bad for lying; after all, he had no clue why he was lying.

“Why were you crying today?”

Among all of Kihyun's questions, this, by far, was the one taking him off guard. He even took a step backwards, unbalanced; as if the question had real force. “I was not crying.”

Kihyun was laughing. It went on for too long.

“Why all the lies?” Kihyun was shaking his head.

“I-”

Kihyun was again shaking his head; Changkyun could see the glistening could be attributed to the fact there were tears brimming in the boy’s eyes. “Sorry, doc, I forgot to feed my cat. Have a good night sleep.”

Changkyun just kept staring at where his neighbour had been standing; he didn’t have it in him to call out to him because in the end, he felt the self-loathing eating away his insides.

But who was to blame when he caused it.

 

Changkyun always questioned the role timing played in his life. Suppose he ever started to forget how crucial timing was, he would always get a sign –a reminder to put him on the right track again.

And he was once again bearing witness to one of those reminders.

He was just taking the stairs to drop by Kihyun’s, faking some obvious excuse for showing up at his neighbour’s door when he saw the neighbour in question lying on the floor, clearly unconscious.

Lim Changkyun, the only person who never panicked on seeing an unconscious body.

He slowly approached him, already dialing an ambulance. Changkyun found something in Kihyun that appealed to him, something beyond the boy’s looks or attitude. Something that went far and beyond a sufferer’s soul; it was something that appealed to the psychiatrist in him. He wished he could tell for sure what their relation was; he wished he could remember what had happened instead of all those distorted intrusive images hindering him from finding any peace.

He was checking Kihyun's pulse, it was rather quick; however, Kihyun's face looked peaceful, as though he were sleeping. He rummaged through Kihyun's pockets, and he found what his guts were looking for. It was a medicine bottle; the label indicated the drug was a dopamine booster. That was something that would draw him to Kihyun in any life time. He put it in his pocket and started making up a story to sell the hospital about how his neighbour had fainted. A major part of him knew it had to protect Yoo Kihyun at all costs; it was something he couldn’t explain.

 

He was signing some forms as Kihyun was being rushed in. He was telling the nurse about Kihyun having fainted from dehydration, some half-truth that he would have to ask his father to cover up before it was caught on official forms. Around ten minutes later, he was watching Kihyun, who was stabilized in the ER, lying on a bed some meters away. Nonetheless, his father was present.

Wordlessly, he gestured for his son.

“What is this?” his father demanded when they were in the hallway.

Changkyun tried not to cross his arms, “Nice to see you, too, dad.”

“Is that your patient?”

“Yes.” Something about the way his father was eyeing him made Changkyun want to look away, but if he caved in now then what was worth fighting for.

“Son, listen to me,” his tone was nothing affectionate, “I warned you last time you brought him but still you choose to ignore what I say. I told you not to get attached.”

Changkyun was soaking up information that always loitered in his heart but was never confirmed.

“I don’t have feelings for him.” Changkyun’s voice was flat.

He was getting a deadly stare during those heavy moments of silence. Changkyun was growing colder. “Do you know why doctors are never allowed to take a case where the patient is someone they know? It’s because their emotions affect their judgment. They are no longer acting professionally because they start acting emotionally.”

Changkyun only looked away.

“Do you know what happens to a doctor who gets caught having taken on a case of someone they know? They get suspended and their license is sometimes on the line.”

It took Changkyun a great deal of restraint not to crease his eyebrows as he stared at the man. “Why are you doing this?” there was something pleading in how small his voice came out.

“Because last time, I asked you to forfeit the case, that this guy was beyond saving, but you said it was a rather inhumane thing to do. You said you would solve it soon some way that wasn’t my way, Changkyun. But as always, you seem to fail in not disappointing me.”

He levelled his father with a cold stare.

Lim Changkyun, always a failure, always a disappointment.

“You know what I think? I’ve told you I don’t have feelings for him yet you’re lecturing me,” Changkyun leant in, hissing, “If this were Yeri, if it weren’t a _guy_ , you wouldn’t be standing here telling me what is _right_ and what is wrong.”

“But it is not.” This guy was inhumane; there couldn’t exist someone as heartless, “It’s some stray cat you’ve picked off the street and grown attached to. I'm telling you nicely this time –and for the last time, son, sever the ties. Even if he weren’t a guy, this is going nowhere and you know it.”

His father took a step backwards, already dismissing their conversation like so many times before.

“You can't sympathize with everyone who needs help in this world; you can't form a connection with every patient just because you need it. You can't save the world, son.”

And as his father uttered those words with his back turned to his son, as he watched his father disappear into the elevator, Changkyun felt like crying.

For minutes, he stood immobile. Changkyun never wanted to save the world, he just needed to save one person.

The question remained, did that person necessarily have a name?

 

He threw a glance at Kihyun before leaving the hospital; once again, he needed to get away. Kihyun’s eyes were twitching. He walked towards his bed, pulled the curtains shut and brought the chair closer to his bed on sitting down.

“I know you are awake.” He was surprised to hear the tremor in his voice.

Kihyun fluttered his eyes open. Changkyun was surprised to see his eyes brimful of tears. He could have sworn, in that very moment, on seeing the brokenness in the boy’s eyes, on sensing the severity of his pain, Changkyun was willing to give up his heart for Kihyun. The heart whose breaking he could hear just in the same moment.

“Why are you crying?” Changkyun reached for Kihyun’s hand, feeling the latter instantly let his hand comfortably sit in the palm of Changkyun’s.

“I’m revisiting my old pain.” Kihyun said, a sob escaping his lips and tearing at Changkyun’s heart. On calming down, he gave Changkyun a long wary look that held more meaning than Changkyun could detect. “Hyuk.”

The name made Changkyun’s mind hurt. He thought maybe if the name could stir something in him, then it had more emotional connotations than most things which he forgot. And he found himself voicing a piece of the truth before he could think it over. “The person you loved?” his voice was shaky, and he felt a tinge of hurt.

Kihyun smiled weakly, looking away. “Maybe there’s hope you’ll actually remember.”

“Remember what?”

Kihyun was already shutting his eyes closed.

“It happened again, after Hyuk I mean. I hope you never remember that tho.”

Changkyun made a face, masking his agony.

“Kihyun,” he whispered gently, “aren’t you going to look at me?”

He opened his eyes and rose up in bed, painfully enough, even for someone who was merely watching like Changkyun.

“There’s nothing good in the dark,” Changkyun titled his head and playfully pressed a smile.

That drew a smile from Kihyun, but it wasn’t to Changkyun’s credit. “You’re wrong,” he was shaking his head, “Darkness is pure, it’s the negation, it’s the escape … like music, it obliterates all that’s undesirable.”

Somehow, the whole situation felt familiar.

The feelings aroused on hearing the name were mostly a reflection of the words Changkyun connoted with ‘Hyuk’. He felt angered, the kind of anger you feel towards someone for hurting someone you loved. That kind of anger transcended any forms of love. He could conjure up words like ‘worthless’ and ‘blame’ easily enough. And he started stitching up his memories.

“You don’t still blame yourself for what happened with Hyuk, do you?”

“I blame myself for what happened after Hyuk, doc.” His smile was held so much pain.

Changkyun was perhaps one of the people most familiar with the word blame. And as he gazed at Kihyun, who looked back at him with the expression ever so torn, he remembered how unfair the criteria could be. Everyone always looked for something to blame. Suppose you forgot where you parked your car and you had a friend with you; most likely, you would rebuke said friend for not having committed the parking spot to memory. Hereby, forfeiting your right to the blame. Same went for someone’s heartbreak or death. The grief overpowered rationality. Fingers were pointed, punishment was embraced as a result of the guilt and a prison was set to lock you in; expanding all the more you tried to escape it with reminders weighing down every step you take.

Perhaps the only variable in the equation was the degree of blame. Even if you didn’t openly blame said person, the possibility would always be there blackening your heart. Perhaps it just fell down to how nice you were.

“You are less talkative now, doc. I'm beginning to think you can finally see me for the monster that I am. Maybe what happened was for a good cause after all.” Kihyun was yawning, rolling onto his side and giving Changkyun his back.

Early in his life, Changkyun had established it was ‘ _what_ we are’, and not ‘ _who’_ because deep down we all knew our core –our essence was nothing human.

There was no hesitation in his words this time. “Actually, Kihyun, the more I look at you, the more I’m convinced maybe someone so pure can exist.”

He couldn’t see his face, but he was positive that had rendered Kihyun shocked. The conviction in which he spoke was something no loss of memory could tone down.

“I want to sleep.” It was muffled and distant but Changkyun didn’t mind. He needed to be by himself, too.

 And he knew for a fact, he had lied to his father earlier.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry christmas, folks!  
> part one of my double update -sb has to finish this fic now, no?


	10. Coral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part two of my double update, have fun //winks

 

  

The night he left Kihyun in the hospital, Changkyun couldn’t sleep without nightmares jolting him awake, breathless and shivering. He kept dreaming of his patients, the few ones he had saved and the ones he thought he had set their lives on the right track. They were all hounding him. Dead corpses were accusing him, wondering why he had failed to save them. He dreamt of Chan, who, among all, was the one most poignant. Changkyun was standing before the lad’s tear-stained face, hearing his strangulated voice as he called out his dead girlfriend’s name. He was looking at Changkyun with eyes that shot all kinds of hurtful accusing daggers, words hurting no less severely. Changkyun was shaking his head in dismay.

The scene changed. Changkyun was raging, shouting at someone whose features weren’t clear, the whole moment seemed like a blur.

 _“Don’t you have anything to live for, don’t you have a reason?”_ he was shouting.

The scenery was making more sense. It was some roof, and the face belonged to Kihyun who never looked as affronted or as hurt.

How long was ‘never’ at any rate?

As a psychiatrist, Changkyun had to master the art of language. Some lives depended on a simple rephrase or on omitting an implicitly hurtful part in your words. Perhaps even curbing the magnitude of the words was desirable at times because it was better when someone didn’t know how dependent they were on you for you to think so highly of your sway over them. But this felt more like a memory; everything about Yoo Kihyun had a sepia filter with nostalgically fraying edges to the picture. It wasn’t some fabrication; that much Changkyun could tell.

But what had triggered his inner demon?

He used to think that sometimes when a reasonable person was driven off the edges; that, too, could be attributed to timing.

He could remember jolting awake, he had been drenched in a nightmare sweat. He had wanted to call Chan, to check up on the kid. Changkyun had looked next to him and much to his surprise, he had found Kihyun sleeping on a chair beside him. The latter had just been stirring awake when Changkyun’s panting was too patent.

“What’s wrong?” Kihyun’s voice was garbled by sleep and it had sounded so sweet to Changkyun regardless of the anticlimactic nature of the situation.

He couldn’t remember why or how Kihyun got to that chair, but in the least did he mind it.

He had run a hand through his hair and closed his eyes, calming his heart to a normal roll. “Kihyun, what was the last thing we fought about before I lost my memory?”

Kihyun had smiled, looked down then smiled one last time. Changkyun had thought nothing could ever supersede the pain in that smile.

“Nothing major,” his voice had cracked for some reason.

Once upon a memory, Changkyun had that patient who he fucked up with big time. His patient was suicidal, Changkyun was having one of those ‘had enough’ days and something about the ‘triviality’ of his patient’s pain and the ‘shallowness’ of his feelings made Changkyun overreact. Lim Changkyun, the person who at some point in his life made the mistake of belittling someone’s pain, forgetting how relative and sensitive the scale for pain was.

The patient was selfish, he at least, acknowledged that much. He was broken and he lived accordingly, embracing that part of him. Changkyun, on the other hand, never acknowledged that he, too, could be broken. And how to fix a problem when it was never addressed?

The patient had a name.

Changkyun’s eyes had glittered with unshed tears as he looked at his patient. The dream was a memory. Wasn’t it?

“What were we talking about?”

“As I said,” Kihyun had given him a small smile as his eyes kept darting sideways, “nothing major, just the future of some cat.”

Changkyun could remember having kept gazing and gazing; he couldn’t remember falling back to sleep. All he could remember was hooded, weary eyes that seemed to have been vying for something, addressing a part in Changkyun that wouldn’t quite surface.

 

 

The pain in Changkyun’s head became more pronounced and the distorted visions grew more frequent. He was stubborn, he was an idiot and he acknowledged it. But he was also a coward. He was scared to admit that the head trauma had caused him a few other casualties; Lim Changkyun was scared to go see a doctor.

He kept trying to solve the puzzle of his life. If Kihyun were a case, then there should be some kind of recording. Knowing himself, Changkyun would have burnt it but he would have also made a point in leaving himself some evidence that he had burnt the files so he would know. If it were true that he and Kihyun had been something more, then why was Kihyun acting that way; why was he holding back the truth?

How much of the truth did Yoo Kihyun know anyways?

It was past midnight and he could feel the omens of a thunderstorm coming. The wind was playing symphonies in the air, rapid and inconsistent like random sparks let off in the air. He felt an inexplicable urge to pay the roof a visit.

When he reached the rooftop, when the breeze hit his face and chilled him to the bone and as he tightened his jacket around him, he realized why most people loved seeking refuges in high places. Perhaps only then, as everything was reduced to being unimportant, as every predicament faced one’s life paled into insignificance for it became dependent on –a derivative of one of the two options present only then: to or not to keep on living. He dared not near the ledge; he knew just how bewitching the insuperable longing to fall was and how powerful a sway it could hold over a person in that pivotal moment. Just how many times had the call of the void talked the most sensible of people into jumping? How many times had it tugged at the most profound strings in someone’s heart, convincing them no healing could be done and that this was the only answer? Changkyun only cast one look at the distance, wondering if he had been there before; whether or not he had been alone.

He pretended the tears forming in his eyes were only due to the need of lubrication as the wind sucked them dry. He sat behind the water tank, opposing the wind direction –throwing back his head and closing his eyes as he faced the opposite direction of the door leading to the roof.

Time, time, time; always the prison of time.

Changkyun was a firm believer in everything once lost would always find its way back to the person. He concluded such when he got to learn it firsthand, proven right numerous times when all his happiness and sorrow eventually reoccurred in the same sequence or in a vaguely similar pattern. As if his life had been one big hourglass, and when the last speck of dust fell and the hourglass seemed empty, the weight of his life would be sufficient to overturn it, hence being gifted another chance to live; to relive an experiment. He always mused over that fact, wondering how many times the hourglass had been turned over and he had been oblivious; how many second chances he had been given yet he let slip from his hands, like those grains of sand.

Now, he was teetering between laughing in spite of the irony present in the situation, and crying in spite of the pain fouling the situation.

He must have spaced out because he thought he had heard the plaintive voice of Yoo Kihyun.

“No, there’s little point to remembering.” He was saying. Changkyun pricked up his ear, trying to make himself all the more invisible if possible. “It’s not like I don’t know that. Stop, please.”

He started wondering who Kihyun was talking to.

Kihyun started humming a tune and instinctively, Changkyun had closed his eyes. What he was hearing was beyond the limitation of words. It was a tune so doleful that when it commingled with his bittersweet voice, it could bring you to tears; a sound so heartbreakingly heartbroken. Changkyun felt he would cry if Kihyun kept on humming; he could be sent to his grave hearing that one voice lulling him to eternal sleep. And he didn’t want him to stop.

After nearly five minutes, Changkyun dared to come out of hiding; he dared to go seek the owner of the enchanting voice. Kihyun was facing the ledge, he was taking a step forward. The way he was standing –pacing on the ledge, as though his life weighed nothing to him; Changkyun couldn’t imagine the number of times Kihyun did that to be so apathetic about such minor status.

Something felt off, different. Maybe he had been here before; maybe he was here with Kihyun before –that was how he could tell something was off. Kihyun gave his back to the city, closing his eyes. Changkyun closed the distance in two beats. He got up on the ledge, thankful he wasn’t a second late, and with an anxious heart, he grabbed Kihyun's hand, “You have one angelic voice, you know that?” he had beamed at the singing angel. Fallen and cast-out; however, that didn’t incapacitate Kihyun of earning such a title: an angel.

Kihyun looked at him with such a torn expression. And Changkyun could swear, the tear his eyes were witnessing slipping against Kihyun’s cold cheek only broke free on his words sinking.

Having got lost in Kihyun’s entrancing expression, Changkyun overlooked the fact they were still on the ledge. Regardless of their hands, the step Kihyun had taken was deliberate; sadly, it was in the wrong direction.

Changkyun managed to suppress the gasp.

“Relax, doc, I'm not going to jump,” Kihyun said. The only thing tying him to this world was Changkyun’s stretched hand which he hung to while his feet, unlike his inclined body, were glued to the ledge. Changkyun didn’t panic; Kihyun's statement lacked any of elements of a bluff. “I just enjoy being midair,” he shut his eyes and Changkyun watched the air ruffle Kihyun's hair. He didn’t feel strained despite of Kihyun's weight.

He spoke slowly, letting each word have its effect on Kihyun whose eyes slowly began to open. “How does it feel knowing you could die any second?”

Kihyun gave him the infamous teasing smile; there was an undercurrent of a different emotion nonetheless. “How does it feel knowing my life is in your hands?”

If Changkyun had let himself project upon each and every one of Kihyun's statements, he was bound to never get any peace of mind. He would be even more haunted, awake and asleep.

Changkyun hesitated for a moment, having a meaningful look with Kihyun before speaking. A look which he wanted to convey what his lips couldn’t and what his mind failed to remember; just in the same way Kihyun was always seeking something in him. “Do you trust me?”

There was a long pause, a very long one and Changkyun thought the air had picked up its pace.

Maybe that was the crux of the problem. It was scary to choose to trust someone. When was the last time Lim Changkyun, a person who always preached one should open up, one should trust, trusted someone?

The question that had haunted Changkyun at night, the one deterring him from being honest.

_Do I love him or do I simply want to fix him?_

Something about Yoo Kihyun felt awfully wrong to Changkyun.

Changkyun pulled Kihyun up in one swift motion; his arm encircled Kihyun while the other hand was interlacing Kihyun's in the air a decent ten centimeters away from their faces. He could hear Kihyun's soft gasp at the physical proximity, and he could distinguish the pattern of the boy’s breathing even above the wind. Their noses touched –were touching and none of them took any action as to back away. There they were standing, alone on some rooftop and on the brink of falling; there they were holding hands, sharing the same breath and searching for answers within each other’s eyes. How easy it would be for Changkyun to lean in, how easy it would be to debunk all the theories the doubts in his heart had been forming.

“Come on,” he had breathed out, talking to Kihyun's lips. “We should head back.”

Kihyun didn’t move instantly, but when he showed signs of abiding, Changkyun had loosened his grip around the boy’s waist, giving him a way out.

And he hadn’t let go of Kihyun's hand till the latter’s bare feet had successfully parted with the ledge. With his eyes cast down and hands in pocket, Changkyun was streaming into the ocean of forlorn memories –lost ones, as he silently walked behind Kihyun.

“Are you free tomorrow morning?” Changkyun was startled out of his doldrums by Kihyun's abrupt question. They were almost on the floor where Kihyun lived. “Can you accompany me somewhere?”

“Anywhere.” Softly smiling, Changkyun had agreed; fully knowing he would follow Kihyun wherever he went.

 

 

The thing about winter mornings was that the sun was usually not on good terms with the sky.

This time, though, Changkyun insisted on driving.

They were standing before his car, a small smile playing on Kihyun’s lips. He pointed to a scratch extending along the passenger door of Changkyun's car. “How did your car get that makeover?”

Changkyun smiled at Kihyun's choice of words. “I honestly don’t remember.” He traced the line with his finger; it was a nasty scratch but somehow he didn’t care. It hit him that normally he would have had it painted yet there it was. Perhaps it served as a reminder, a celebration of some kind. Changkyun didn’t know.

Kihyun gave him the directions without divulging where exactly they were heading. Once again, Changkyun found himself not caring. He probably reached this point in his life where he didn’t care about what happened as long as he was with the right person.

And his heart told him Yoo Kihyun was the right person. He just had to work some stuff out; the sooner, the better.

He killed the engine after a fifteen-minute drive. Kihyun heaved a loud sigh then got out, gesturing for Changkyun. He didn’t know where they were. It was some kind of institution. He got out anyways, standing next to Kihyun and trying to pinpoint exactly where the latter was looking.

“Kihyun-” Changkyun began, turning to face Kihyun. It took him a great amount of courage to say the name. He knew he was on the verge of coming clean.

“I hope you like kids.” Perhaps Kihyun had sensed his intentions and instantly killed the subject.

However, Changkyun's resolution was unshakable. He had been swerving for a long time; it was about time he had his answers. He took two steps till he had been standing in front of Kihyun, his left hand reaching for Kihyun's. Kihyun stood unblinking.

“Kihyun,” his free hand shied a centimeter away from stroking Kihyun’s hair, lingering hesitantly midair, “were we something more?”

There was a pause where only their eyes spoke on the behalf of all the words scared of being voiced.

“Do you think we were?” it wasn’t hostile, unlike most of Kihyun's counter-questions,

“I don't know,” Changkyun was biting his lips.

“You said you don’t have feelings for me,” he wouldn’t meet Changkyun’s gaze; Changkyun who wasn’t sure if he wanted Kihyun to look at him. Amidst the hurt in Kihyun's words, Changkyun tried to remember when he had said such words. It hit him that, as he had suspected, that day in the hospital when he was having a face-off with his father, Kihyun had been awake earlier than Changkyun wished. “Do you want us to have been something more?”

Changkyun ruminated on the question. Something called out to him stronger than any precedent time to say yes, yet it was bogged down by the distorted memories and the whole mess of the situation.

“You know, I loved someone who loved me back. I thought it was for who I am, that I, finally, could have some peace of mind. It didn’t end well; apparently they didn’t love me. I was just the broken toy they could never fix, that was why they stuck around.”

Changkyun was fighting back all the undesirable thoughts. The tears swam and obscured his vision yet he didn’t blink them away. It didn’t matter; there was nothing soothing about Kihyun’s expression that haunted his conscience. The lump in his throat hindered all words from coming out. Changkyun’s mouth was halfway open then he sealed it shut, choking on all the words unsaid.

Kihyun pressed Changkyun’s hand tightly. It felt as if the younger were trying to assure him, telling him not to feel bad. His thumb started making circles in Changkyun’s palm, the gesture was tearing him aloft.

“What happened with them?” Changkyun dreaded the answer.

“Nothing.” Kihyun was smiling, tears slipping more easily upon the uplift of his cheeks, “I trusted them and they lied to me and it hurt. You know, the same old story.”

He was about to open his mouth when a voice interrupted.

“Kihyun-sshi, are you here to see the twins again?”

Changkyun had to instantly turn around; that husky voice had haunted him for years.

“Hiyori-sshi, nice to see you again.” Kihyun said, freeing his hand and taking a step to the side.

When Hiyori’s eyes fell on Changkyun, she smiled warmly despite the momentary confusion. “Morning, Changkyun.”

He nodded, pretending he couldn’t feel Kihyun's gaze on him. She had said something; Kihyun had nodded then both were past the gate. Changkyun was trying to make sense of the situations.

Minutes later, Kihyun was back but this time he was with two kids, and not Hiyori, thankfully.

During the past few weeks, Changkyun hadn’t seen Kihyun smiling as genuinely. He smiled as he looked at the two kids; they didn’t look much alike; however, he felt his heart opening up to them immediately. Something about their presence felt peaceful.

“Hello,” Changkyun said, crouching to his feet and extending his hand. They were both holding some markers and papers.

“Kihyunnie, who is this short guy?” the boy with the passive face asked.

Changkyun was ready to fight the boy with the pretty face when he heard Kihyun laughing, and instantly he was willing to forgive all the wrongs in their messed-up world.

“Hyungwon, stop,” the other boy hit his brother, “that could be the person Kihyunnie is going to spend the rest of his life with … like Hyuk.”

He could sense Kihyun's jaw clench yet his smile didn’t fade; maybe it was the kids’ effect.

“Ya!” Changkyun said, moving closer towards Hyungwon, “this short guy was created this way so Kihyunnie here wouldn’t feel alone down there.”

He wasn’t aiming for a full laughter from any of the kids; he was rather teasing Kihyun, yet the two kids were giggling wholeheartedly.

“I’m Changkyun, Kihyunnie’s annoying-” he paused for a second, stealing a glance at Kihyun who was barely hiding his amusement. “What am I to you … again?”

“I don't know,” it was lighthearted, “why don’t you tell me?”

Changkyun smirked and averted his gaze to the brother then back at Hyungwon. “I’m Changkyun… probably the person Kihyun is stuck with for the rest of his life.”

Kihyun was looking at the ground and shaking his head while smiling; Changkyun couldn’t be happier.

“I like you,” Hyungwon said, extending his hand and Changkyun instantly shook it, “I’m Hyungwon, the person who used to take care of Kihyunnie and this is my annoying little brother, Wonho.”

“Hey!” Wonho elbowed his brother, “You’re the annoying one.”

Before Changkyun could process what happened, the twins started fighting and Kihyun was just smiling at them with the accumulated affection of this world. He got up to his feet and walked till he was standing next to Kihyun again.

“They’re always like that.” He said, not taking his eyes off them.

“Aren’t you going to stop them?” Changkyun asked, finding his way to a smile himself.

“No. That’s how they say ‘I love you’ to each other,” Kihyun himself was giggling.

Hyungwon had taken out his marker and drawn a stroke on the face of an affronted Wonho.

“Hey!” Changkyun called out, meddling between the two kids but having the misfortune of getting his face coloured by Wonho’s counterattack as well.

A memory hit him with the momentary pain, he pushed back against it. A coffee was being splashed against his shirt as he stepped between a rude costumer and the barista he was harassing. He closed his eyes for a moment, seeing Kihyun's face.

He turned to Wonho. Changkyun was carrying him off his feet and spinning him around. He could hear three different giggles this time. “Just because you’re taller than him doesn’t mean you can paint his face.”

“Don’t let his cute face fool you, Changkyunnie. You should see how he is before we sleep.” Hyungwon defended himself and Wonho stuck out his tongue at him. Changkyun was glad he had chosen the shorter one to spin around because as he held up the boy, he realized how short he, himself, really was; even comparatively.

The kids made Changkyun sit down on the grass as they started inspecting him.

“You’re kinda good-looking,” Hyungwon started as the twins paced around him in circles. He was sitting cross-legged with his hands folded in his lap. He cocked the kid a challenging eyebrow, as if he was waiting for him to follow up with a smart comment on something as irrefutable.

“Your voice is weird tho,” Wonho said. Changkyun could see Kihyun on the verge of saying something.

“Don’t you like it?”

It was the first time Changkyun had looked fully and openly at Kihyun. Kihyun who returned his gaze and for a second, there was a brief look of flirtation between the two of them; a look holding a secret two lovers share.

“I like it, it’s kinda funny but I like his voice.” Wonho said excitedly. “But we’ve to do something about how Changkyunnie looks.”

“What do you say, Wonho?” Hyungwon asked, crossing his arms while looking at Changkyun and leaning into his brother who mirrored his pose.

“I say we fix his hair.”

“Shall I bring a pair of scissors?” it was Kihyun. Changkyun shot him a dirty look.

“You do that and you’ll be sleeping without C tonight.” Changkyun was as startled as Kihyun at the words. C, a cat. He could see Kihyun, he could hear him.

_‘C.’_

_‘C. That’s such a fitting name.’_

As Wonho tied Changkyun's hair into a bun, Changkyun and Kihyun didn’t break gaze. There was hope, there was hurt and above all, there was fear in Kihyun's eyes.

“Cute bun.” Kihyun teased, about to touch it when Changkyun's hand slapped it, gently, away.

“Shut up, Galaxy Hair.”

Kihyun giggled. He stopped only to look meaningfully into Changkyun's face, almost imperceptibly smiling. Yoo Kihyun's hair was pink; peachy perhaps. Changkyun could visualize Kihyun with more purple and blue in his hair along with the pink. No, he wasn’t visualizing; Changkyun was remembering.

Changkyun found himself still smiling even after Kihyun started giggling again. Kihyun, then, started staring at him; at first Changkyun was smiling back then he had to ask, “What?”

He shrugged. “I just really like this side of you.”

Changkyun's heart probably skipped a beat at that.

“Kihyunnie, how do you draw a heart?” Hyungwon, who was now trying to draw, asked. He handed Kihyun a red marker.

Kihyun smiled and pulled Hyungwon closer. “Draw two question marks trying to face each other.”

Changkyun flinched.

Wonho asked him for his rubber band back. Absentmindedly, Changkyun took it off. He was too focused on Kihyun anyways.

_Then be my interrobang because I'm so sick of all those question marks._

It was wistful. Changkyun was too wishful.

“Changkyunnie,” Wonho called out. It took another two times before Changkyun noticed Wonho had called out to him. When he spoke, he was whispering. “You're not going to leave Kihyunnie like Hyuk did, right?”

There was something fondly heartbreaking about the question and about Wonho’s tone.

He forced a smile, swallowing hard. “That’s the plan.” He realized although he hadn’t thought the question over yet there was his truth.

They _were_ something more.

_Minhyuk._

“Hyuk,” he said, fully looking at Wonho after making sure Kihyun couldn’t listen, “Is that short for something? Minhyuk maybe?”

“Minhyuk?” Wonho put on a thoughtful face. “I think that’s Hyuk’s brother, I'm not sure. But no, Hyuk is Hyuk.”

Changkyun struggled to find from where in his memory emerged the name. When his phone started ringing, he had a feeling he knew who would be calling and he felt instantly disheartened.

He excused himself and went to his car to take the call. Or in his case, take the second call on missing the first one.

Five minutes later, after his father had hung up, Changkyun was struggling to breathe in spite of the assault of tears. He hated this; he hated this feeling and he hated how helpless he was against it.

When he thought that was the last of his tears, he reached for the car handle, ready to go out when the passenger door was opened and Kihyun slipped into his respective seat.

Changkyun pressed a smile. Kihyun’s index finger instantly rose to poke Changkyun’s cheek, right through the dimple. And he was successful in making Changkyun feel less crappy.

“It’s like that time; our first time in the diner,” Kihyun began, not facing Changkyun, “you got a phone call and it broke you.” He let that sink. But it wasn’t the words alone; Changkyun's heart was sinking too. He could feel the memory trying to break free from the shackles of the prison of his mind.

“Why did your father make you cry this time?”

“He didn’t.” Changkyun couldn’t even bring himself to use the word ‘cry’, settling for the feeble refute.

When Kihyun's looked at him, he seemed hostile, but not towards Changkyun. Seconds later, when Kihyun’s words resolved, he sounded simply sick with the weight of the world. “Why do you insist on lying, aren’t you tired?”

Changkyun laughed. There was no adjective to describe how he felt more fitting than ‘tired’.

Changkyun's life could be summed up in a few moment that kept recurring ever so frequently. And this moment, this feeling, was one of them. They sometimes forgot that Changkyun, too, was human; that he needed reassurance, that being there for everyone they thought he was completely whole. But Changkyun had way too many holes in his heart, more than most people.

“Has it ever occurred to you that there’s no such a thing as being whole?” Changkyun began, slamming the ball of his hand against the steering wheel. Kihyun didn’t do as much as flinch. When he was calmer he resumed. “There’ll always be that one subject you're not talking about that’s eating you. There’ll be those feelings that are rebelling, pent-up, dark and consuming, and it’s about time they surfaced, you know.”

_There would always be that one thing that could cause a crack._

And the crack could easily grow, spread till it covered your whole being and with the slightest bump into reality, you were utterly shattered. Millions of uncollectable smithereens. But no one cared, because you were smiling; they couldn’t see past pseudo smile. The irony of having something as transparent yet not a single soul seeing past it.

Again, because you were smiling.

It was all about the eyes, and what insurmountable sadness they harboured.

“Sometimes all you need is simply a deeper look.” It was all it took to sober Changkyun up. When he looked at Kihyun, who was smiling warmly, his eyes started tearing up. He plummeted into his seat, threw his head back and covered his eyes.

“I’m tired, Kihyun, I’m tired of this confusion. Why can't we just sit down and talk about what happened?”

“Because, doc,” he felt a hand brushing his cheek, catching a tear. “Maybe it was your choice to forget.”

Changkyun took a deep breath. He was considering what Kihyun had said, toying with the possibility.

So much he wanted to keep the possibility in the realm of theory.

“Let’s play true or false,” he spoke slowly but unhesitatingly.

“I know you're lying, Changkyun.” Kihyun's voice was unwavering, still, it managed to sound ever so sweet with the compassion it radiated. 

Still, Changkyun felt a pang of hurt.

“That’s why I'm asking you if you're sure you really want to remember.”

He nodded. He inhaled deeply again, peeled away his hand and looked at Kihyun. “I told you I'm gay.”

“True.” Kihyun confirmed.

“I lied about being a psychiatrist.”

“True.” Again the sad smile prevailed.

And again the pang of hurt intensified. “You were my patient.”

Kihyun laughed; it was hollow and it scorched Changkyun's ears. “That’s a bit complicated.”

Changkyun turned in his seat, reaching for Kihyun's face. He kept gazing into the younger pair, wondering how it was possible to shoulder such a burden.

“Guess it doesn’t matter,” Changkyun’s voice was growing quieter under the weight of his warmth, “guess I only care about one answer, Kihyun.” Kihyun’s hand reached for Changkyun's that was on his cheek. He swallowed and braced himself for the fall. “I told you that I love you?”

Kihyun's eyes instantly darted away. He had to clear his throat thrice before answering but still the answer came out choked and full of pain. “False.”

Changkyun never felt smaller. But it didn’t matter; he was willing to go to square one because it meant he could relive the triumph of reaching the finish line again.

Albeit most things about Kihyun had stirred so many question in Changkyun, whenever he was with Kihyun, he didn’t care if the latter was keeping something from him. He even didn’t care if Kihyun was lying to him. He was too caught up in the moment, in Kihyun.

Mainly, because a part of Changkyun didn’t care about what he couldn’t remember. He was establishing a relation all over again. He was given a second chance while the first, however outcome it had played out, was wiped clean from his memory. Think of reliving your favourite book for the first time and feeling the impact of each word real on your heart, listening to your favourite song and getting the good chills telling you it was the time signature of when your heart synced with the tunes, falling in love with your first love and feeling that mesh of contradicting feelings for the first time.

At last Kihyun had found it in him to return Changkyun's gaze. And Lim Changkyun couldn’t look away.

“This is not the first time I'm doing this,” Changkyun whisper was dwindling away as he brought their entwined hands down and leaned in.

“True.” Was the last thing Kihyun uttered before meeting Changkyun's lips.

He wondered if he had felt like this the first time; whether it felt this magnificent to finally fulfill what his heart had been aching to do.

When he pulled away, their foreheads –their noses were touching and their eyes were still shut. Changkyun could feel his heart throbbing to Kihyun's breathing.

Changkyun opened his eyes minutes later. Ages later. And Kihyun's eyes were still closed. “Tell me what happened, Kihyun.”

“No, Changkyun, that’s the one thing I never can.” He bit his lower lip and backed away, reaching for the car handle.

When Kihyun was out, Changkyun called out to him, his heart thrumming. “What we had was real,”

Kihyun laughed. He looked up at the sky, blinked then bent down a bit to answer Changkyun through the window. “It felt real.” He sounded bitter. He looked bitter.

Changkyun's smile was lopsided. “It was a true or false kind of questions, Kihyun.”

“No, Changkyun,” apparently, every ‘Changkyun’ slipping past Kihyun's lips was a bullet adding to the holes in Changkyun's heart; some hurting more than others as they were only widening, and sometimes reopening, vainly-healing wounds. “I used to live in a world of black and white until you, as colourful as you are, taught me there were so many shades of grey.”

He was glad Kihyun had looked away for there was the familiar onslaught of pain threatening to undo him.

Kihyun tapped twice on the window. “See you around, doc.”

For the second time that day, Changkyun was a man knocking the doors of despair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, I still have alot to say lol but I'll just leave you to draw your own conclusions  
> also, sorry, I know this's considered a 12k update -pretty long, opps?- but I might not be able to update for two weeks bc exams so yea (or maybe I'll, depending on how difficult I deem them lol)  
> and they're still pretty much happy chapters //winks


	11. Lightyellow

 

   

It had been days and Changkyun was still trying to establish which of the two he would opt for taking refuge in; dreamland swelling with painful images or reality which was no less painful. It wasn’t even 7 P.M. yet he decided to try to sleep; perhaps then the noise would quiet down.

He heard a loud shatter punctuated with an angry shrill which soon tapered into a breathless sob.

The words were loud. The words were clear.

“Have it your way, Minhyuk. If you're not leaving then I am.” And he heard a door slamming.

_Minhyuk._

Changkyun tried to think over what Kihyun had said about not being his patient; the intruding images interfering with his train of thought were always the obstacle between him and forming a conclusion.

An hour later, when sleep was unquestionably out of reach, Changkyun was leaving his apartment in hope of leaving the voices behind as well. It was raining yet he was using his umbrella as a cane, marching on under the rain.

He always thought it was rather ironic how thunder-storms calmed people down.

He was receiving a call from his father and thirty minutes later he was seated in the couch in his office, propped for thorough inception and destructive criticism.

“You're going to have to get married soon,” it was the second time his father repeated this statement ever since Changkyun had set foot in his office. As if Changkyun hadn’t heard him the first time, and not silently denunciating all what that one sentence entailed.

The more words coming out from his father’s mouth, the more Changkyun felt worthless.

“Are you in love with that boy?” Changkyun had remained silent throughout his father’s entire lecture; however, this he couldn’t overlook.

“What if I was?” it was flat, eyes no less dead.

His father was breathing what could only be fire. He approached his son on the couch, bringing him up to his feet. Changkyun never felt as unnerved. And he was scared.

“You just have to always do this,” he snarled, “why can't you just be a normal son?”

Changkyun was laughing as he looked away; he couldn’t find his voice. He was hurt and he was angry. Both were the understatement of the year.

“I’m going to die soon. You're alone-”

“I’m not alone.” It came out heated as Changkyun hissed back … but it was true. And he was able to meet his father’s stare, albeit momentarily. He backed away, fixing his clothes whilst not breaking their stare.

“He’ll become yet another stigma in your life,” he was still at it.

Changkyun pretended he couldn’t hear; he had enough demons in his head trying to drag him down as it was.

“Is he even worth all you're doing for him, what’s so great about that boy that you’re willing to go against me for? What does he has that you can't find in-”

Changkyun cut him, striding forward. He hated this. “He has everything someone like you can never begin to understand.” He wasn’t sure whether the thing consistently stabbing his heart and throttling his words was the pain resulting from his father’s feelings or his own. But one thing he knew for sure: he couldn’t tolerate listening to him talk so condescendingly about someone as pure as Yoo Kihyun.

“Open your eyes, son, you need help.”

At that Changkyun reached his breaking point. He found himself throwing the ashtray against the glass window in one angry swoosh.

“I’m sick because of you.” He spat. “Your infidelities and all the shit you’ve done throughout your esteemed life condemned my life. I was very young and you managed to make me feel like trash. And you still do. Till this very moment you still manage to make me feel unloved-” Changkyun's voice was growing hoarse as he listed his emotions, “unwanted and worthless. You’re always taking away everything I once loved. _You_ took away Mom! And you?” as he closed the distance, as he uttered the smoldered accusative ‘you’, he felt the waves of pain crashing against his quivering his heart. Yet, unflinching stood the human before him. “You can't even love me for who I am. You can't love me _at all_.”

This was years and years of pent-up frustration detonating in the worst way possible.

After a second, a cold hand was reaching for his face as he was trying to keep his raging emotions under control. “Son,”

“Don’t.” He slapped it away. “Just don’t.” Changkyun took a step backward, disgusted with everything including himself. “You can't even begin to understand how I feel. I've spent my life trying to win my own father over. But guess what? I failed. Maybe you are right after all. All I do is keep failing.”

He was walking towards the door, unable to speak and unable to cry.

“You need help, Changkyun.” His father was shouting.

The door slammed shut.

As he walked, he could hear his phone ringing. He kept ignoring it.

So many people in the street. So many people that he couldn’t see nor could they see him.

He looked up at the flickering streetlamp. On and off. Just how long before the light was entirely gone?

When he checked the phone, he learnt it was Jooheon. He was undergoing so many emotions at odds; Changkyun felt so many things all in the same time that he felt he would implode. The fire of his rage couldn’t keep him warm and the coldness of the weather couldn’t numb his heart –the pain was starting to dizzy him. Seething with anger, he flung the phone into the lamp. Seeing a mother usher her child away, far away from this madman coming undone.

He didn’t want to talk to anyone.

He only needed one person.

And he needed to let go.

With no phone and a sore throat that only worsened on coughing out blood, he kept marching on. He wondered if second chances were a bliss or a curse; perhaps he had been cursed with a bliss –love was a curse, wasn’t it? If so, then did this universe bring people together just to tear them apart or to let them fight for each other? Maybe the universe was bored it wanted to watch love tearing lovers apart. He couldn’t, for the life in him, find a damn reason why two souls that loved each other couldn’t spend the rest of their lives accordingly. Having questioned the ruse of time so often, he found himself thinking if two souls always found a way to each other; that perhaps there was an empathy link between them … like that rumored to be between twins. How often had he experienced one of those episodes, episodes where there was a restless emotion in his bosom, a sad presentiment maybe or an ominous feeling spreading itself like infection within his insides, only to find that someone he cared about was undergoing their own war?

He was confident the majority of this crowd was so preoccupied with the predicaments facing their lives that if he struck up a conversation with any of them, an hour later they wouldn’t remember his face. He would be a face lost in the crowd, he would be a blur. He didn’t want to think about the dreary number of the people in that one crowd on the verge of collapsing under the pressure of the sadness latent within. How could something fill you up so much yet you felt so empty with the absence of any fulfillment? Maybe there was someone screaming at the top of their lungs but the voices residing in everyone’s minds drowned the scream. Very implicitly, every person contributed to the chaos of this world. Everyone had someone’s blood on their hands, just different shades.

Crimson. Red. Maroon. Black.

Was it possible to love someone to the point of sharing one heart?

At that, Lim Changkyun was willing to reach the conclusion that perhaps it was possible. He was seeing Kihyun exiting some building, face down with his hoodie being the only thing protecting him from the rain. There was a decent distance lying between them which Changkyun hadn’t closed until Kihyun had been sitting on an abandoned bench in the nearby park. Something in him didn’t want to call out to Kihyun. It was the same thing that wanted to watch Kihyun from a distance –that wanted to help him but knew it couldn’t. And that thing was having a war with Changkyun who wanted to kiss the washed out tones of Kihyun's heart, telling him it, his blindingly beautiful heart, was the best damn thing he had ever seen.

He always felt instantly better on seeing Kihyun. Even when he could vibrantly see there were tears mingling with the rain on the younger’s beautiful face. This was exactly how the world functioned; so many people would pass a Kihyun by without batting an eye. Just like they were passing him by now, oblivious to the tears on his cheeks; or if they weren’t oblivious they would immediately dismiss them as raindrops. Just how much and how little power did everyone have it in them to help someone.

It was always a choice.

Changkyun opened his umbrella and held it over Kihyun’s thrown-back head.

“Heard the rain complaining,” he began, “it said your skin is too cold for it.”

Without opening his eyes, Kihyun had smiled. “I’ve been colder.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Lim Changkyun.” He replied, a hint of laughter around the edges of his voice.

Changkyun laughed. “Heard of him. I hope he’s not causing you trouble.”

“He’s trying to keep me warm.”

A raindrop got into Changkyun's eyes, causing him to shed a lonely tear. Still, he fought to look at Kihyun. “Kihyun, aren’t you going to look at me?”

Slowly, Kihyun had opened his eyes.

Changkyun sat down. He tried to fix the umbrella to the bench but it was soon blown away by the wind, high up in the sky. Kihyun turned his head to Changkyun, the latter could feel the rain dripping from Kihyun's nose and lips and onto his jacket. Kihyun stretched his neck more and brought Changkyun's head closer to him.

Yoo Kihyun was kissing him. With chapped lips and with a bandaged heart he was. And Changkyun thought no previous kiss had tasted so sweet. The pure emotions present in tears would always taste so sweet.

Another memory intrusion.

“ _‘Changkyun, I don’t want to get close.’”_ Changkyun found himself reciting. He could remember a similar kiss. He had been holding Kihyun's hand between his hands; Kihyun's broken expression had conveyed the magnitude of his words.

And now he was looking at a similar expression after reciting Kihyun's words to his ears.

“Maybe I don’t have to try to push you away after all,” Kihyun whispered, “not that I can anymore.”

Changkyun was confused. “What do you mean?”

Kihyun backed away, throwing his head back again. “I mean, at this rate you’ll get your memories back. You’ll remember what broke you. And you’ll leave me.”

He didn’t know whether to feel hurt or affronted by that comment. “I never would.”

“You don’t know that,” it sounded a bit cold. “The first time might have been your decision, next time it won't.”

Everything in him churned and hurt. He wanted to hold Kihyun tight –he wanted Kihyun to hold him tight.

He found himself resting his head on Kihyun's shoulder, another thing that felt right. “Then why did you decide to get close?”

Kihyun was laughing. “Because right now, you're my in between. You're something lying between a stranger and an old lover.”

Kihyun's hand was the one seeking Changkyun's this time. Nothing had ever felt colder to Changkyun's hands. He wanted to keep holding Kihyun's hand till the day he died should it mean he would be able to keep it warm. He wanted to keep Kihyun warm. Kihyun deserved to be kept warm.

It wouldn’t stop raining.

“They think I'm crazy. It’s not me who’s crazy, the world is.”

At that, Changkyun was the one laughing. Indeed, when a person was created, they had two souls. But because this world was cruel, they had to separate the two souls; putting each in a different vessel. You were considered lucky if you were able to find the other half before you died; and if you weren’t lucky, then at least you died trying. Whenever he set eyes on Kihyun, his soul shouted for him; that was it, that was him –his soul had spent its entire life deprived of its other half’s warmth … but now, after having looked and searched for so long, his soul rejoiced, because it knew. Changkyun could almost hear it giving a sigh of content and relief, going all like, ‘there you are’; it was home.

“Changkyun,” Kihyun's voice sounded weary, “tell me why your eyes are so filled with tears so I could feel it’s okay to cry.”

Changkyun scoffed. “I'm that transparent now?” he shook his head, feeling the sadness reach his core. “I hope the old me wasn’t so incompetent, no?”

“As I said, I like this side of you better.” Kihyun was whispering in his ear, his wet lips touching Changkyun's cold earlobe and numbing the pain in his heart. “You don’t have to keep it up, you know. There’s spaces in everyone’s togetherness.”

Changkyun threw his head back, smiling from ear to ear as a tear touched his lips.

“I’m just tired of everything, you know.” Changkyun finally let out the words. “I’m tired of telling you how tired I am.” His low chuckle held no humour.

Kihyun nodded. A second later, he sighed. Changkyun found himself muting everything around him but the sound of Kihyun's breathing. The sound of the rain he so much loved, the sound of people not bothering to open their eyes he so much wished to change –everything but that one voice he muted.

“Do you think first love lasts a life time?” Kihyun asked.

An image instantly flashed before his eyes, a very distant memory, one that had accumulated dust. Of rejected feelings and unrequited love, of years of silent suffering and brittle smiles. “Do you still love Hyuk?” he found himself mouthing.

“Not in a fairly long while.” Nothing ever sounded as definite. “The pain is there, but I no longer love him.”

Changkyun smiled to himself.

“Do you still love your bestfriend?” he could sense the hesitation in Kihyun's words.

And he had never been more confident. “Not anymore. I laid that love to rest.” He looked at Kihyun just in time to see a placid smile spreading across his face.

Changkyun wanted two things right now; the first was to break down before Kihyun, just Yoo Kihyun lest the breakdown lost its meaning –and the second was to kiss that boy senseless; till both of them forgot who they were.

“Isn’t it hard?” Kihyun was asking, “Being so strong, always being there?”

How was it possible that a smile could speak so many tears?

“Honestly,” Changkyun began, still smiling, “I thought if I can't do anything about my life, I should at least have done something life-changing about another's.” It was as he confessed to Kihyun that he could see all the wrongs in his life; all the lives he were responsible for.

 He thought it was rather great knowing that someone out there had their life set right because of something you told them, or because they looked up to you in some aspect and ignored the other less-admirable ones. As though they had filtered through your qualities and hand-picked what worked right for them; what they could yield to their needs and you just helped them coin into the right thing for themselves. For a better self.

“That’s not an answer, doc.”

The words tasted heavy on the tip of his tongue, and they nestled bitterly on his heart. “It’s harder not being able to save everyone.”

Astonishingly enough, Kihyun was laughing at that. At something that was by no means a joke, something that was rather very sad.

“What’s so funny?” Changkyun asked, dumbfounded.

Kihyun turned to him, tilting his head. He blinked away the teardrop that had got into his eyes. “What do you think was the case was with me?”

Changkyun's heart must have weighted tons at that question. “I failed to save you from yourself?”

As Changkyun contemplated the truth in his words, Kihyun was, again, laughing.

“That’s what you can't see, doc.” Kihyun was shrugging and Changkyun felt the strings lethally tightening around his heart. “Maybe all the previous times with any of your patients, the question was ‘are you going to save my life or am I going to take it?’ But with me, it’s more about either you saving my life or _you_ taking it. Either ways, my life is in the palm of your hands.”

The words were ripping his insides. Lim Changkyun was a kid who couldn’t tolerate anything that didn’t accord with his ideals. He was prone to being easily broken.

Kihyun wasn’t just done. “You don’t fix them, nor do you give them a happy life. You just give them an easier one by offering them a better coping mechanism.”

The words hung in the air, profound and irrevocable.

“I'm sorry, Kihyun.” He was apologizing for so many things, things he, himself, was afraid of addressing.

“Don’t be.”  
Kihyun was kissing him again. After the euphoric moment of having committed the feeling to heart, Kihyun had spoken, “You might never realize it, but your mere presence in my life had done greater than _that_ ,” it was sufficient to render Changkyun's teary eyes wide open, “you were my wakeup call and I'm more than thankful.”

Words. Clumsy, powerful things.

Changkyun chose to remain silent. He wouldn’t utter a single word as Kihyun was silently crying next to him.

 

 

 

At day, neither he nor his neighbour were in their respective rooms. At night, he would find himself keeping Kihyun's company; even after those few nights Kihyun almost or actually cried in front of Changkyun. It always struck the latter as admirable, the courage in letting yourself shed tears before someone; to lose control.

In the five nights Changkyun had spent in his company, he had learnt Kihyun had one of the purest souls god ever created. That despite being twenty-one, Kihyun was actually a child stuck in an adult’s body. Contrary to what Changkyun thought, Kihyun could actually hold a conversation without making his brain overheat with actions he couldn’t understand. Yoo Kihyun was capable of showing sympathy, of relating to people, of admitting he was scared of getting hurt; of getting broken by pain. And Yoo Kihyun was a bitter cynic who wanted to convince himself he was no longer a starry-eyed idealist; a quality Changkyun found intriguing.

Simply put, Yoo Kihyun was a very decent human being.

Changkyun felt he was walking on air whenever something in Kihyun's speech indicated he, Changkyun, was getting a special treatment; that he was seeing a side of Kihyun the latter didn’t let anyone else see.

You could learn about a person in four minutes by asking the right questions more than you could ever learn about them in years –the way they spoke, the words they verbalized, the thoughts they didn’t articulate, the memories they cherished, the way they carried themselves around, the way they reacted to any stimuli; to your words. Words that echoed deep in their soul, the way their eyes dawdled on certain things more than others and the look that gleamed in their eyes during those moments –things Changkyun had been seeing for almost a week now.

On the sixth night, he found himself staring at Kihyun with a smile too wide his face could hardly hold.

Kihyun turned to Changkyun, wearing a genuine smile. Then he looked up at night sky, holding out his hand and closing one eye as he looked at the moon from between his shaky slender fingers. The phantom of his former smile still lingered on his lips while it warmly dyed his distant eyes the colour of shattered dreams and bittersweet reminiscences.

“Do you ever get those moments when you find yourself wondering about your purpose in life, wondering why you were born?”

Changkyun kept gazing and gazing at him. Moments like this killed him. And even though his mind couldn’t recollect the memories, he felt deep down in his heart that this wasn’t the first time Kihyun had allowed himself to wear such an expression while Changkyun was around. That it wasn’t the first time Changkyun had felt like this.

When Changkyun looked at him during those infrequent moments, he got to learn the real meaning behind the term ‘naked soul’. It wasn’t that he caught glimpses of his soul, or the leaden rays he accidentally let slip through the cracks people tried to fissure in his callous shell, his bubble, his safe zone. In fact, there was nothing transcendent about these moments. And Changkyun knew he had frequented this thorny path to his soul more often than not that he had recently labelled it ‘pain on display’, because that was how one dealt with ignorant people who would never appreciate art or pain and could relate to neither, needless to say sympathize with. One would give them something they thought they understood, and would delude them into thinking they had the upper hand. Even if they did, they would never understand pain the same way the person in question did. And if the full magnitude wasn’t grasped, then there was no harm in relieving oneself from the tiring tough act and letting the pain become exposed.

To Changkyun, he thought so as someone who was once one of these ignorant people.

Lim Changkyun missed so many gaps in his memory. Yoo Kihyun had too many holes in his heart.

Kihyun's soul was otherworldly. The more pain it had undergone, the purer it became. No matter how your definition of the word ‘awful’ varied, this naked vulnerability, this purity of ideals akin to that of a child wiped it out altogether.

It was something he knew could stand bare in the drizzling rain, naked and unafraid; something that wasn’t intimidated by the thought of being looked down upon, something that didn’t fear getting smeared or scarred –something that spoke its dissatisfaction with every broken thing in our world in silent interrobangs and ferocity that burned hotter and hotter even in that extreme rain, its flames twitching and writhing but never put out.

“Does everything have to serve a purpose, why can't the purpose be not having one?” Changkyun joked and he succeeded in making Kihyun laugh. He had been laughing a whole lot more than when Changkyun had first met him. Changkyun had thought he would soon look better, but Kihyun still looked tired.

“Do you like playing the devil’s advocate so much?” he teased, bumping his shoulder into Changkyun's as he swayed.

Changkyun shrugged. “Maybe I just like messing with you.”

“I wish I had known you all my life.”

Changkyun felt like his lungs had only unbreathable air in their sacs. He tried to search for his voice; he cleared his throat, coughed, looked away although Kihyun wasn’t looking at him, but nothing came out.

“How does it feel when you’re here with me?” Kihyun asked.

“How do you think it feels knowing you’ve forgotten something important?”

He saw Kihyun's face shift from shock, to pain, to delight, to tremor and to pain again. He closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath.

“I want to show you something.” Kihyun said. He got up to his feet, let out a long exhale and when he opened his eyes he had added, “Lets walk, it’s not far away.”

“Why now?” Changkyun was taken off guard.

Kihyun clapped his hand, smiling enthusiastically. “Because today is special, Lim Changkyun.”

Kihyun might have not said it, but Changkyun felt like he preferred the silence of the night to any other voice. He felt that as they walked and as their shoulders grazed and as their eyes met, Kihyun wanted him to remain silent.

He wasn’t sure what to expect but Changkyun wasn’t let down when he stepped into what seemed like a studio. It wasn’t very big, just the right size for personal use that even the recording room hardly looked used; ceiling too high, walls too empty, floor too dusty. It didn’t look like it had anything personal in it; it looked practical and the way it wasn’t very organized suggested it had often been turned into a second home. Crumpled papers covered the floor and a pillow was thrown somewhere on it. The only thing that stood out was the complementary shape of the piano that was placed in the corner – big, black, shiny and cared for.

As Kihyun took the seat at the piano, he motioned for Changkyun to sit down.

And he could swear he would lose his mind as Yoo Kihyun started playing. At first, Changkyun was too awed by Kihyun's entrancing expression, the way his hands moved fluidly across the keys, flowing and hitting each key with the adroitness of an experienced virtuoso. Transparent strings from his fingers were adjusting the heartstrings of Changkyun's heart to his. His face was passionately moving to the heartrending music as though the tunes controlled it; it was beyond artistic. But Changkyun was overwhelmed by the whole scene. There sat the young boy pouring his heart into the piece he played, his eyes shutting down slowly; just in time once his fingers started moving quicker and with urgency from one key to another. He was feeling the intense magnitude of each keystroke in his every bone and fiber; the music was growing louder, faster, Changkyun felt he would be left behind; as though he had to run to catch up to the tunes that propelled him on inexorably. He could see Kihyun wrenching and contracting as though playing the climax part was physically and not just emotionally painful for him. Perhaps even ecstatic; ecstasy was never exempt from pain.

The music suddenly stopped, Kihyun's hand finalizing the unfinished piece with two high-pitched minor keys.

It took Kihyun a few beats before he could open his eyes. He was faster to recover, for Changkyun was still trying to wrap his head around the whole acuity of the situation and the intensity of emotions. The more he was around Yoo Kihyun, the more depth Changkyun thought existed in the world.

This was Yoo Kihyun keeping an old promise to him. Changkyun could remember that much.

Kihyun was smiling a very sad smile when he spoke. “I could never finish this. I could never find a way to end it.” He spun in his chair. “I started playing because of Hyuk when we had first met. I was dedicated to my music, to the piano and I gave it my all. I loved it and for most of my life Hyuk and music were all that I lived for. And when it all went down, I felt that I’ve put so much into loving him that I no longer had the capacity to love anything else.” Kihyun paused, his eyes cast down. “It still haunts me, how I can't finish this piece, it empties me. I just feel so damn empty at times it’s unbearable.”

He was fascinated; he doubted the spell would ever be lifted. And he didn’t have to put much thought into it. “Tell me, what comes to mind when I say the words _empty canvas_? Is it how empty it is or the anticipation of the art soon devouring it?”

The corner of Kihyun's mouth twitched; it was the same painfully bitter smile.

“If you’re trying to compare me to a canvas, it’s the worst thing coming out of your mouth so far, doc.” Changkyun wasn’t offended; he knew what he was getting at. Kihyun proceeded. “I’m the worst type of canvas. I'm an abandoned piece consuming unremarkable space on the wall. Think this. My colours fade, my edges fray, my motif gets eaten up, my feelings get dulled, my signature is washed away and I get sucked into the emptiness I meet in everyone’s eyes. I’m swallowed by the pain present in my tears. And my heart weighs me down,”  
Kihyun gulped and looked him straight in the eye. “To unspeakable depth.”

Changkyun shook his head. So much he wanted to hold Kihyun and tell him life wasn’t as bad as he thought, that he should never look down on himself. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he was returning Kihyun's deep stare. “You may be the worst form of art but you’re also the most beautiful damaged art. The art that inspires, that begs to be written about.”

Changkyun got up and walked to him; Kihyun was already on his feet. There was hardly ten centimeters separating their faces; there was so much calm and electricity in the air Changkyun thought they would ionize every particle of it.

“You’re so beautiful, Yoo Kihyun, inside out.” Changkyun mouthed and by the end of his sentence he was kissing Kihyun.

Kihyun's lips were still parted and his eyes were still closed even though Changkyun had pulled away. Changkyun could feel Kihyun's hand on top of his own as he still held Kihyun's face.

“Kihyun, look at me. What are you scared to see when you open your eyes?”

Kihyun's free hand tightened around Changkyun's. “I'm scared of what I can't see. Someone once told me those are the things that should scare me the most.”

Changkyun smiled, realizing how twisted his words had become.

“Months ago, you asked me what I was scared of the most,” Kihyun was whispering and Changkyun leaned in with his forehead to touch Kihyun's. “It’s funny how the answer is the exact opposite of that I didn’t voice back then.”

Kihyun finally opened his eyes, smiling affectionately. “I was scared of dying alone. Now it scares me how I wouldn’t be alone on my deathbed.”

Changkyun narrowed his eyes, already fearing the worst. Kihyun smiled, turned and gave Changkyun his back. Changkyun could only guess he was trying to stay collected. Kihyun turned to him once more, paced till he had reached the couch and opened his mouth to speak. On the fourth try, the words finally flowed out of his mouth.

“I still can't decide if keying your car had been the best decision in my life or the decision I’d regret the most.” The words sounded like laughter and tears; their in-between. Changkyun closed the distance again but Kihyun pushed him on the couch, soon to be straddling him. Kihyun was holding him by the shirt and looking down at the knots he had made at his chest as he spoke. Changkyun, terrified and confused, could only wait. “I was there when you crashed. I saw you purposely drive into that truck. I was the one who called the ambulance. I was the one who didn’t dare go near you knowing I was most likely to have driven you off edge,” he let out a loaded low laugh. “It’s my specialty after all, driving people off the edge.”

Changkyun’s heart was hammering in his chest. Everything was falling into its designated place, like jigsaw falling into place. Purposely driving into a car crash wouldn’t be uncharacteristic of Lim Changkyun.

“What is it that you think broke you so much?” he was looking compassionately into Changkyun’s eyes. Changkyun thought that no matter how long he lived, he would never be asked that question. And ironically enough, having asked similar questions his entire life, he thought he would be the one putting that question forward in front of Kihyun's eyes and not the other way around.

No one loved pain, and all his life he ran away from pain although it always found a way to catch up.

Kihyun slowly leant in and gave him a kiss the latter had slowly reeled in, breaking it ever so quickly.

Nonetheless, Changkyun was the first to speak. “What are you trying to do?”

His answer came in a strained whisper. “Trying to make you let me go.”

Changkyun smiled, lifting himself up on his elbows. “Do you think there’s anything in this messed up universe that could make me let you go?”

Kihyun's gaze was melting/ “How could someone as amazing as you are love someone like me?” He chuckled.

“You have to be blind to not be able to see what I'm seeing.”

They were kissing again.

When they broke away, Changkyun was still bringing their foreheads together. It seemed like it was their thing.

And he loved the boy for everything he was.

“When I had asked you if I said I loved you and you said false,” Changkyun began, looking deeply, meaningfully into Kihyun's eyes. “If it felt real, then it _was_ real, Kihyun. You were never a case.”

Kihyun looked confused. He gently freed himself, got up and took a defensive step backwards. “Are you sure?”

Changkyun's eyebrows creased in confusion. “Yes. There was never any recordings or notes. How hard is it to believe I'm in love with you?”

Kihyun wasn’t smiling. Changkyun's crooked one faded away.

“I'm sorry, Changkyun, but something is wrong.” He was shaking his head; his voice was coming out choked.

“You still don’t remember. But the day we fought, you admitted me being a case. I don't know what’s real anymore, but there’s something you’re keeping from me.”

So much Changkyun wanted to refute that but deep down, he knew the answer. Kihyun flopped into the pillow, rubbing his temples. When he looked up, he had the same entreating look on his face.

“I-”

The images were killing him, his father’s words echoing in his mind.

Changkyun clipped his words. Having sought 'truth' all his life, it finally dawned on him. A crack was made to let the light of reality slip through the illusions and just when he was willing to accept the incorporeal form of the answer to the question of existing, it thundered down. And it wasn't a crack, it was a meteorite hitting him without a single warning and he was rendered to a small babe opening his eyes to a world of killing and bloodshedding; only then did he know nothing would be the same anymore because the image was forever instilled into him. It hardened him. The callous was justified. The bitter was explained.

He was still immobile. He couldn’t even feel Kihyun's gaze on him, not to mention Kihyun's presence.

On getting up, he took his jacket and headed for the door.

“What's wrong?” Kihyun's tone was quiet yet the franticness prevailed.

“I'm sorry, but I'm not enough to fix you.” Changkyun said and closed the door.

He didn’t put on his jacket; it didn’t matter. What day was it anyways, what year? Did that matter?

If you were bound to drown, it didn’t matter how well you could swim. You would still drown.

_Should I break all the clocks in the world, would time stop?_

 

  
By the time he went home, his mind had been swirling with more than just images. But even the alcohol couldn’t drown his demons.

He thought he must be imagining things for he was seeing Yeri sitting on the stairs before his door.

Confused as he was, he gave her an inquiring look. She rose her head slowly and beamed at him; she seemed to have been waiting for so long.

“Oppa,” she clapped her hands happily. He gave her a thin smile and proceeded heading for the door. He was numb; he needn’t anyone near him. He was hardly a person. She was saying something, he couldn’t hear –his head hurt.

Somehow he managed to sit on the couch, if nearly falling was considered sitting.

“Yeri, why are you here?” he closed and opened his eyes multiple times before speaking. His mind was too fogged.

She sat next to him. “I couldn’t miss your birthday, oppa.”

He tried to steady his vision enough, she was sitting too close; leaning way too close. She was going for a kiss when he turned his head to the side, avoiding her. He felt like screaming.

Lim Changkyun was this close to screaming out Yoo Kihyun's name.

Gently, she was bringing his head back to face her.

She loosened his shirt buttons,

She was kissing him. He was kissing back.

“Happy birthday.” She said. Changkyun felt hotter than he was minutes ago; his mind felt heavier and everything felt wrong. He couldn’t think straight.

“Wait, I'm not ready.” He was trying to push her.

Was Yeri laughing? Changkyun knew he had to snap out of it.

“It doesn’t matter,” she was saying.

_It doesn’t matter…?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)  
> guess the exam wasn't so hard, unlike a certain sb ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)  
> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


	12. Black

 

   

There was this date in everyone’s life that could mark a turning point; where the person walking out of this variable tragedy was no longer the same person.

For Lim Changkyun, January thirtieth, four days into his twenty-fifth year, served as the turning point.

For four days, he hadn’t seen the sun.

Changkyun was glad he had broken his phone before his birthday; he was glad no one could reach him unless they decided to show up at his place. He also did a whole lot of doorbell ignoring.

Lim Changkyun resented himself. He hated himself to the core.

He felt like scratching at his skull to deaden the voices, he probably would have had he not been so numbed out. The knocking was making him even more unhinged, it maddened him most of all noises.

“We have to talk.” The knocking was growing more urgent. “Oppa, open the door.”

Changkyun didn’t care. Unless that voice belonged to Yoo Kihyun, he didn’t care. He didn’t know for sure whether or not Kihyun had gone home in days, but he guessed he hadn’t.

Detachedly, he got out of his bed and opened the door. He knew he looked like a mess and he wouldn’t allow himself to look in Yeri’s eyes. He just sat down, staring at his laced hands as she talked.

He didn’t like this. He didn’t like any of this and he wanted an out. He needed out.

By the time Yeri had finished talking, Changkyun's body temperature had dropped thirty degrees. He was sitting on his armchair, paralyzed with his hands clasped and with his heart clutched. He had been staring at the floor for minutes now.

“I'm sorry.” She paused; Changkyun didn’t know where she was looking but he knew she was studying him in his catatonic state.  
She sounded everything but sorry.  
Her voice softened, “Heyy, we can work this out together.” Yeri was seated on the couch, her hands folded into her lap and a small paper bag lied on the table, with its content exposed.

He lifted up his head. While he looked and felt like shit, Yeri never looked better. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he didn’t recognize his own voice, the words were hardly audible but this wasn’t his voice.

She seemed not to have heard him.

As calmly as he could manage, he got to his feet. “I can't marry you.”

She looked away, obviously hurt. He could see one of her hands clenching into a fist.

This couldn’t be happening; it wasn’t possible for a life to go more awry. “Suppose I married you. You’re bringing a child in this world to a home where his parents aren’t in love.” His voice cracked. Indeed he might have been numb for days, now the pain was sobering him up. He approached her. “Tell me you didn’t do this on purpose. Tell me...” Changkyun couldn’t even grope for words. “I-”

“We can work this out,” her eyes met Changkyun's, hopeful, “I can make you love me.” Her hand was about to reach out to him, as though there were anything to reassure. As though Changkyun didn’t feel disgusted with himself and with her. With everything.

Changkyun took a step backwards and started laughing. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” It wasn’t hostile, it was just really hurtful. “You know what else, Yeri? Suppose I did love you,” Changkyun's voice was undergoing the same suffocation, the same helplessness, the same littleness, “I'm a ticking bomb. You’ve not only condemned my life, but also your child’s.”

Her teeth clenched and she looked hard into his eyes. “Ours, oppa. This child is _ours._ ”

Changkyun's face hardened. This was way over his head. He only wanted few things in life but they were all slipping farther away; becoming even more unreachable. He slumped back into his seat “Get out.” It was calm. Way too calm.

“But-”

“Out.” He repeated, looking at the floor. He could swear he was cold enough to be shivering. “You’ve no fucking idea what you’ve done.”

For a minute, all she did was look defiantly at him. “Don’t pretend like you're any better than I am.” Her voice was growing closer; Changkyun could hear her heels clicking against his floor as she walked towards him, accusatory finger pointed. He wished he could close his eyes; he wished he could un-hear her voice. “I didn’t get pregnant alone, _you_ got me pregnant.”

“You’re sick.” Changkyun lifted his head to meet Yeri’s gaze. He shook his head, Changkyun was beyond repulsed. “Don’t show me your face ever again.”

He didn’t know what emotions she had undergone on hearing that sentence for he wasn’t looking at her. He couldn’t. Nonetheless, she had got back to her feet, grabbed her bag and in a calm quiet voice, she said, “I understand.”

Once the door was closed, Changkyun had fallen to his knees, clutching his head and feeling the omens of a breakdown.

And he could remember a similar situation.

But it was Kihyun exiting, with a different scenario and a different level of hurt.

One of Changkyun's worst fears was taking place; he was becoming everything he ever fought; he was becoming his father.

 

And it didn’t end at that.

That night, Changkyun got out of his bed to open the door to the person haunting his nights.

Kihyun was smiling a smile saturated with pain. He never looked so beautiful.

“Do you still love me?” he asked while still not having passed the threshold.

“Always.” Changkyun replied. Even amidst all his pain, he could never not love Yoo Kihyun.

Kihyun gave a smile full of tears that made Changkyun's restless heart even more anxious. Kihyun entered and leaned on the door. Changkyun's heart started hammering. Kihyun smiled, a few hesitant mouth-opening-then-closing, a deep intake of breath, a single long stare at his right as he tried to speak then the words finally came out. Irrevocable and absolute. “I'm leaving this place.”

Maybe the hammering in Changkyun's chest finally broke his heart.

When he was young, Changkyun had to look for an explanation for that pain he felt in his chest whenever life got too hard. He used to think there was a monster inhabiting everyone’s hearts, being nurtured by the recurring episodes of pain life made one undergo. It was just there, lurking in your heart, waiting to satiate its parasitic dependency on your pain. The more slaps you got from life, the bigger it grew … a relation ever so directly linked. He wanted to take a look at everyone’s hearts, seeing their scarred hearts and the beastly claws marking them. Sometimes, he thought he could forgive the little monster. Maybe it had no call in hurting; maybe it was only taught how to hurt.

But right now, he hated the monster, or maybe he simply wished it could suck out the blood faster.

He was looking at Kihyun who was smiling serenely at him. It was forced and it looked wrong and Changkyun felt his own eyes welling up with tears. Just how many times did he have to beg himself to stay strong?

“What do you mean?” Changkyun choked out. “Why?”

“I just have to, it’s easier that way.” How could someone smile with so much tears cushioned in their eyes?

“When?”

He couldn’t really hear Kihyun's answer and his heart started plummeting further. It didn’t seem to matter; it was never going to be enough. Changkyun's head was in major agony. He could feel his pain again; he could feel the cold descending on him. He was seeing flashes of ‘them’ in his room. Changkyun was reliving his pain, hearing Kihyun say he loved him. He could see seeing Kihyun walk out on him, feeling the immobility of his limbs, the numbness of his senses yet the pain in his heart was insufferable.

It was sad that no matter how hard he tried to remember Kihyun, he failed to; and the only thing he could remember was the one thing he needed to forget.

Kihyun's face was buried in the crook of his neck, he wasn’t crying; he was just clenching to Changkyun's shirt so hard.

“I'm sorry, I didn’t plan for this-”

Biting back his unshed tears, Changkyun hugged Kihyun tighter and kissed the top of his head.

His muffled voice sounded on the brink of tears, however, he carried on his speech, “When you told me you couldn’t remember our time together I was happy even if it pained me. I was grateful I’d no longer burden you, that I wouldn’t cause you pain. But you just had to be that persistent-”

Changkyun gently pried Kihyun's face away and kissed him again, longer, deeper.

“You just had to talk to me again and I had to let you in again-”

For the second time, he hushed him with a kiss, Changkyun was insatiable. “I don’t care.”

He was still kissing Kihyun even when he lied him down on the couch and towered over him. Changkyun backed away, running the back of his hand against Kihyun's warm-with-tears cheek. “I'm falling out of my own skin, Kihyun,” he started. “I'm just this in love with you. I’m losing myself. I’ve ventured so deep in your heart.” Changkyun could remember how he felt the first time he fell for Kihyun. His journey in Kihyun's heart started as an aimless wander, then he realized he was losing his sense of direction in Kihyun as if the latter were a labyrinth and eventually Changkyun got lost in Yoo Kihyun altogether.

Changkyun planted a kiss on his forehead, closing his eyes and savouring the moment. “And now I’m stuck and I can't find my way out.” The deeper he went, the more pieces Changkyun left of him behind, the more layers of him got peeled.

 _I can't let you go_.

Kihyun once again took refuge in covering his face with his forearm. That, too, Changkyun pried away and he started kissing him again. He could feel how tightly Kihyun's hands were around his neck, how lustfully Kihyun kissed him back and how longingly he looked at him. And Kihyun wasn’t the only one.

In the end, Lim Changkyun was capable of falling in love with Yoo Kihyun twice.

 

 

 

February first was the day Lim Chol had passed away.

Changkyun was absently present during the funeral. He couldn’t believe his father was gone. He couldn’t believe his father had died with things hanging like that between them –probably thinking Changkyun hated him. He couldn’t believe he wouldn’t talk to his father ever again.

_Death, it breaks you._

There was their family gathering, sharing the grief of mourning someone dear. A family that hadn’t seen each other in years. Life’s little jab, the irony of having brought people together a tad bit too late.

Death broke you because you no longer looked at things from the same perspective. You learnt to appreciate little things more. What he wouldn’t give just to talk to his father again, to tell him that he was sorry and that he loved him.

Changkyun was a living phantom. He was revisiting a memory, one that occurred earlier. He had been sitting, getting lectured by Jooheon the same way he, Changkyun, had lectured Yoo Kihyun months ago.

“You need help, Changkyun.” Jooheon had finalized.

Changkyun had got up and on a whim, he had been standing too close to Jooheon. Jooheon had leaned in, it wasn’t a kiss; it was a tease. “Consult a doctor,” he had been whispering, “for me. Please?”

Lim Changkyun thought he had let go.

Humans were enslaved by their own emotions. Once you loved someone, your heart became an independent being of a will of its own, having you as its captive. Every doped emotion you ever had, came forth –surfacing, making your head invalid. In short, your heart was just another massive entity.

He used to look at Kihyun and think how the world had long lost its order, singing of too much chaos. A world where nothing could be right, where humans were never free of hard feelings, where the only person holding you back was yourself, where you were your worst enemy; where you think you were doing the right thing that you started justifying your actions no matter how wrong they were. Thinking you were protecting the ones you loved when you were only hurting them. Every step you were taking, so foolishly thinking you were placing your foot in the right place but it was just too dark to know where the right place was. A world where choices one made and actions one took were never the same thing.

A world where one single mistake could shape your life till its very end. No matter how much you regretted it or how much you needed to take it back. The need of a restart-

This was the world where one could seldom get a happy ending; where love could only bring you pain –perhaps the best case scenario was not causing much pain to the person you loved.

The world where losing one thing meant losing everything; where not having anything dear to you seemed like the best solution. It was where you prioritized yourself above the one you loved then evidently regretted it.

This world was a place made for leaving, a place where you wanted to do so many things but life cut you short before you got to do any of them.

Life was cruel, but only because one chose to suffer. Only because one was always making the wrong decisions.

_What’s the essence of life?_

 

 

 

Something was wrong.

Plenty of things were wrong.

On his way home from the funeral, he ran into Yoo Kihyun. Changkyun was just getting out of his car and throwing a look at the building where he lived when he spotted the familiar halo. Kihyun stood still, as though he were a frame taken from a tragic movie yet the frame, as it stood alone, seemed like a picture-perfect scene. Cold as the rain poured, Kihyun was smiling warmly.

Changkyun tried to smile. He crossed the street and stood a few inches away from Kihyun. His clothes were still dripping from all the merciless rain, but he didn’t care. He didn’t feel cold.

He kept studying the rain on the boy’s face –on the boy’s mouth trembling with words unsaid.

With a trembling smile Changkyun tried to speak.  
“I'm not okay.” Was the only thing he told Kihyun.

“I know.”

That night, it was as he nuzzled into Kihyun's neck in bed that the latter finally asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Life’s sense of humour was a rather fucked-up one. It generally needed to find a new hobby other than bullying human beings.

“I'm becoming dependent on you, Kihyun.” Changkyun knew he was drifting away, he could hear it in his voice.

“Good, so you'd not leave me.”

“Hmm?” Changkyun tried to wake himself up a bit, “I promised to stay by your side forever, remember? Weren’t you the one who told me you were leaving yesterday?”

Kihyun's expression was muddled. “Changkyun, I haven’t talked to you since the day you walked out on me,” Changkyun rose up in bed, “that was your birthday.” On his choked tone, Changkyun found there was a concerned look in Kihyun's eyes. “This is the first time I'm in your apartment after your accident.”

Changkyun's memory struggled to summon memories of that night after Kihyun had spent in the hospital, after Changkyun had fought with his dad for the second time about Kihyun.

He knew something was wrong.

Kihyun was playing with his hair, gently twirling it as Changkyun was now lying in his lap. He smiled and closed his eyes, feeling a tear break past his shut eyelids. “Yeri is pregnant.”

Again the smoldered voice. “I know.”

He swallowed, as though he could keep away the pain like that. “I'm the father.”

There was a pause. Even Kihyun's hands stopped briefly. “I know. I saw you that night.”

Changkyun opened his eyes and looked at Kihyun from down there. “Why are you not angry with me?”

It was the transparent smile. “Don’t get me wrong, I'm hurt and I find it hard to forgive.” Even through his numbness, Changkyun could register the daggers of pain.

He flinched.

“I decided there was very little point to it. I can't let the hurt in me overpower my love for you, Changkyun. I was never a sensible person, but I don’t want any more regrets.”

He kept blinking at Kihyun.

He felt protective over those intervals between the seconds and those seconds where his eyelids briefly met each other. It was those intervals where both of them existed; never belonging left you little choice as to where to feel truly alive. Changkyun was in no condition to think straight. Maybe love and pain were universal languages because they went together, neither was exempt from the other. No pain could ever mar his love; messed-up as it was, pain did nothing but solidify their love. It was because Kihyun loved him so much that he was hurt as much. And it was because Changkyun reciprocated that feeling from the depth of his core that he felt pain surpassing that of any heartbreak.

“I love you.”

He loved Yoo Kihyun. That was the only way to put it.

He was at such loss of words that the mere complexity of the word ‘love’ should be equally expressive as to convey how much love he harboured for the boy and enshrouded both of their stuttering hearts.

Kihyun smiled so beautifully and said, “I know.”

That night, it didn’t matter that Kihyun was younger, it didn’t matter that he was hurt; because that night Changkyun had finally found a place to rest his head.

 

 

He awoke to two world-shattering realizations.

The first was Kihyun not being in his bed. He was afraid Kihyun was gone and that everything, like he got to learn yesterday, was a figment of his imagination. The second was more concerning, by far more painful and it evoked so much pain on his part.

Jooheon had called him, telling him they had found Yeri’s body. She had jumped off the roof.

It took one incident before all your failures rattled around in your memory, drawing your attention to the failure of a person that you were. And this was no simple one incident, this was someone who had taken their own life not because Changkyun had failed to save them, but because of something Changkyun had done.

Mind you, had taken two lives.

Through the speaker, Jooheon had called out for him for the umpteenth time.

Another gear snapped. “Hyung,” Changkyun was trying to swallow, “have we kissed this week?”

There was a small pause. “What are you saying, Changkyun? Of course not.”

Changkyun smiled to himself. He could feel the weight of Jooheon’s unasked question through the speaker. “You're thinking I need help, don’t you?”

He sounded to actually consider the question and that was all Changkyun needed. On grunting frustratingly, Jooheon replied, “Don’t kill Shownu but he’s concerned you might be keeping stuff from him about your condition. He’s worried that you’re-” Jooheon couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

Changkyun was still smiling; he finished the sentence for his friend. “That I'm slowly deteriorating?”

He made no reply.

Changkyun didn’t hang up, Jooheon sounded like someone who wanted to say something but was either afraid or couldn’t find the right phrasing. Lee Jooheon was both.

“Changkyun, are you okay?”

Changkyun was shaking his head as he bit his lower lip. He tried to draw a deep breath as silently as he could. Out came a breathless chuckle, a failed attempt at cushioning the blow of his words. “My father died, my cousin took her own life and I just asked my straight bestfriend if I had kissed him, what do you think?”

“Changkyun-” it sounded distressed and urgent to Changkyun's ears.

“You don’t have to worry, hyung. I'm fine. I always am.” He sighed without really intending to.

“Stay home, I'm coming over.”

He was laughing, or snorting. Changkyun could no longer tell which was which. “It’s pointless. I’m already heading somewhere.”

It was no longer about what was real and what was not. At least it no longer became the case when Lim Changkyun got to learn everything he had been preaching for years was just crap he had been selling people; some letters hardly sustained together, holding so much power over kindred souls but little meaning to him. Because in the end, nothing was real to him if he was hallow enough not to believe in anything.

“Tell me you're not alone.” His voice was trying to talk some sense into Changkyun, begging him.

He rubbed his eyes. “I just need some time alone. Really, I’ll be fine.”

Jooheon was saying something but Changkyun had said goodbye and hung up, not heeding the evident complaints.

 

That was about it for Lim Changkyun.

The ‘about it’ point in anyone’s life was when they finally came face to face with themselves, no more lies and no more running away and no more pampering. You just lied your true self bare for downright chastising and harsh criticism. You could no longer take a step forward without a clear conscience; because you started addressing all the things that had gone wrong with your life, all the responsibilities you had.

It was as he sat on the roof of his old home and on the icy tiles that he understood what was so beguiling about any high place. He was just watching, he wasn’t present in the moment at all.

According to the purest soul in this universe, Lim Changkyun was colourful. If so, then how come he could only see black right now?

It was cold.

He was cold.

He sat cross-legged on the tiles, his intertwined hands encircling his ankles and bringing his legs closer.

_My name is Lim Changkyun and I might as well have just killed my cousin and my child. I am twenty-four and I'm a failure of a person._

If he could hate himself more, Yeri’s death would have been the last straw. Perhaps it was a good thing.

He took out his phone, dialing Kihyun.

“Changkyun,” Kihyun's voice was as sweet as ever and he relished in the moment.

He didn’t speak for a while, just finding peace in the breathing pattern as usual. He threw his head back and closed his eyes, feeling the cold wind against his skin. He gave a little cough that he wouldn’t let manifest into a string of endless coughs.

“I've been wondering,” he waited the tremor out of his voice, “which beginning do you think we had, happy or sad?”

Kihyun's voice must have reflected his feeling; he sounded perplexed. “What do you mean?”

He inhaled sharply, “I mean you can only have one go at happy. I mean this determines our ending.”

Kihyun was, unsurprisingly, silent. But not for long. “Doc, neither of our first meetings had been pleasant.”

He found himself smiling.

But Yoo Kihyun was wrong.

The first time Changkyun saw Kihyun, the former was drunk. It wasn’t when Kihyun had splashed his shirt and it wasn’t as he ran into Kihyun outside of the hospital. He doubted Kihyun could even remember that encounter; one of the fondest to Changkyun's heart despite foggily remembering it. It was when a flirtatiously-drunk Lim Changkyun had obligingly told an adieu-whispering Yoo Kihyun not to jump.

“Thought I was the one who had a thing for endings,” Changkyun appreciated Kihyun's attempt at lightening the mood; however, it only rushed his tears. “You should just stick to your promises, doc.”

This sentence knocked the breath out of Changkyun and the tears froze in his eyes. How could he tell Kihyun he no longer could stick to his promises –to his promise? How much he hated how little time they had.

Nonetheless, he kept on breathing. “Listen, Ki, you’ve to hear me out,” Changkyun could feel his false smile being the only thing keeping the tears where they belonged.

“No.” It came out sharp. “I refuse to listen. You plan on killing yourself afterwards,”

Changkyun's eyes were wide open, wide enough to let the tears fall this time.

His voice softened. “I’ve been in this situation so many times to know the voice of someone bidding this world farewell.”

Changkyun let out a laugh that sounded so much like a sob.

“Changkyun, why are you laughing?”

He fought back another harsh laugh. “I’m laughing at the bad joke that is my life.” He had never felt as bitter. “And you know what, Kihyun? I think I deserve it. Maybe there’s no answer to why I was born, maybe Dad was right.”

Silence this time was too heavy on Changkyun's heart more than his ears.

Kihyun was drawing a slow, deep breath. “You were the person who taught me I'm being too hard on myself,” it was the first time he heard such a deliberate tone in Kihyun's words, “Isn’t it because you’re too hard on yourself, not seeing the good things in you; not seeing the things people aspire to in you, the things that maybe made others –no, someone, a single suffering soul find some deliverance? Isn’t that enough, knowing there’s someone out there you were the reason they’re not referred to in the past tense?”

Again, Changkyun was rendered silent beyond the conception of all words combined. It was rather ironic, how Kihyun was the one trying to save him now.

And Kihyun seemed to be awaiting his reply. Sadly, Lim Changkyun was someone who acknowledged his failures more than his successes. It was hard not to when he hardly succeeded at anything.

“No one?” there was the hurt. “Screw it, Changkyun, you were that person to me!”

He found himself smiling. So much he wished he could spend all his life with Kihyun. He was right, someone so good was impossible to give up on.

It didn’t matter; Lim Changkyun was short on time and no road led to Kihyun.

“Why are you being silent?” there was the despair. “Please say something.”

He could feel his pulse throbbing, he felt too tired. “I'm just waiting for you to tell me something that’ll save me from myself.”

“I need you, Changkyun,” Changkyun was looking up at the inky starless mantle above his head and biting his lip so painfully, but the pain didn’t even register. “If you die, then I’d be alone.”

It felt so good. The peace knowing the person you love loved you back –the courage it filled you up with sublimated any other knowledge.

That was how it went: you were too busy saving someone you forgot that you, too, needed saving.

“I don't know if you remember, but there was a time when I asked you which of the seven sins was the worst.” Kihyun's voice once again retrieved him. “And I thought it was greed, Changkyun. You see, I speak melodies and not images. Yours is like the hesitation the mind speaks before pressing a note but the hands had already worked out because they learnt it by heart.”

There was something very soothing, very healing to Kihyun's vulnerable voice.

His pitch dropped however the intensity quadrupled. “Like a soft hummed lullaby that pulls me in,” he could visualize Kihyun's words. He understood what he meant for he himself was being lured into a peaceful place he had been trying to avoid under the command of that dainty voice. “In … in. It draws me in all the more till I want it all. And greed would become my sin.”

Changkyun was laughing by the time Kihyun's words were felt on his heart. “How did I get so lucky?”

There was a sad smile tinting Kihyun's wobbly voice. “I’d say you're rather unfortunate.”

Neither of them spoke for long, long beats.

“Don’t do it.” It was strong. “Don’t do it, Changkyun.” This was a hiss, nonetheless.

Changkyun was growing more unhinged. “Why are you suddenly so angry with me?”

“I don’t really have the leisure to control my emotions.” Changkyun could tell Kihyun was speaking through clenched teeth. “Don’t.”

“Because you love me?”

_Because you need me?_

“Yes.”

Mournfully, Changkyun was nodding to himself.

“Do you think you would still love me after you know me for who I really am?” Regardless of the hesitation of his heart, Changkyun summoned the courage to voice the question. He didn’t know who he was anymore, his whole foundation was shaking. Was he the person vying for world peace or was the monster who killed two people? The answer was Lim Changkyun was a person undeserving of love. Especially if it was Kihyun's.

_Let me tell you the thing about the riddle of love,_

It was like any other riddle. You were fascinated, for decent period of time, desperately seeking an answer, only to become underwhelmed once you stumbled across the answer. And once Kihyun would realize how blinded he was, how big of a mistake he had made by associating himself with someone like Changkyun, he would see the answer. And he would walk away. By then, Changkyun would have more than one broken heart.

“You think I don’t know you, Changkyun?” despite the certainty with which Kihyun spoke, his voice still managed to tremble.

The same tear-saturated smile. “No one really knows a person, Kihyun. Wake up.”

“Why do you insist on hurting me?”

Something snapped in Changkyun; a memory breaking free, not totally demystified but in its wake, the presentiment lingered. As heightened as ever. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Changkyun needn’t clarify, Kihyun's silence gave away everything.

Kihyun wasn’t just any bomb; Kihyun was a bomb whose fuse was too short and it was sizzling.

He could remember Kihyun telling him he was ‘leaving’. The memory was real and it wasn’t the one he thought was real a few days ago.

“Do you have any idea how hard it has been being around you and not being able to talk to you or touch you or tell you that I love you?” he had never heard Kihyun's voice sound quieter; that voice he loved so much. “The first days after the accident were hell for me. It felt like everything I had been feeling for the past months was all in my head. I knew I never wanted you to leave me, I just really had to let you go. Forgetting us was the worst option.” His voice dissolved into air.

“Then what do you think I'm doing?” Changkyun couldn’t breathe.

“Other than giving me everything to take it back once again, Changkyun?” Small. So small was Kihyun's hurt voice.

It started to rain. And it didn’t start gently, the drops were slaps against Changkyun's freezing skin.

“Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?” Changkyun decided draining the last bits of his energy on that one pained hiss was worth it. Yoo Kihyun was worth it. “Do you have any idea how mad fucked-up I’d be to let you go if I didn’t have a good fucking reason, Kih-”

“Why do you have to make me feel like this?” Kihyun's sob ripped Changkyun’s heart apart. “I don’t want to fail as a person – _you_ don’t know how much it hurts knowing I’ve failed to love someone, as if Hyuk had taken my capacity to love, that I'm this inadequate. You made me move on, now you’re throwing me back there. Alone.”

The emphasis on the word ‘alone’ was all it took to unspool Lim Changkyun once and for all. It hurt. It hurt so much that Kihyun was in pain. “But Kihyun, I don't know what’s real anymore!”

He felt too strongly for Kihyun; Changkyun loved him more than life itself. And for that exact reason he needed to let go.  
He snapped, the tears audible in his words and voice hoarse with the pressure of the words. “I’m not sure about a single thing in my life, a single memory.”

“I love you, Changkyun; that is _real_.” Kihyun was getting as equally worked up. “Just come back home and we’ll figure it out. I can't have this conversation over the phone.”

“I hate that I’m breaking you,” Changkyun's voice was no less vulnerable; raw emotions always had that effect on even the mightiest of people. He was never one to speak his mind without considering the impact of his words, but his mind was in such a ruthless mess he felt he had to spill everything to Kihyun.

“You are breaking me?” Kihyun was laughing; a snarl, a snort. Whatever label, it still hurt. Changkyun doubted anything would ever be not painful at this point in his life. “I hate the fact that even tho I love you with the certainty of this world, _I_ still managed to break _you_.”

Changkyun could remember all the times Kihyun had spoken of Hyuk; he could remember the expression and how much pain it screamed. He hated himself for making Kihyun experience this episode again. Especially that Changkyun’s brokenness could hardly be attributed to Kihyun. Come to think of it, Changkyun had no idea why Kihyun would say that.

Kihyun wasn’t a broken toy; not to Changkyun. Because a broken toy wasn’t entitled to call another broken toy, a peer, a title that was just the norm for both of them.

Lim Changkyun, a broken toy misplaced and adrift.

And Yoo Kihyun, a broken toy lost and forgotten.

“I'm sorry, Kihyun,” Changkyun was clutching to his hair, he was still growing progressively frantic, “I can't do this anymore.”

Kihyun's hurt laugh tapered into a small breathless sound. “My heart felt absolute in your hands, I trusted you better with it and I've never been surer. Now you're giving it back and telling me you can't do this anymore?”

Changkyun scoffed. He was a coward and he would play it safe no matter what. His heart was screaming for his mind to stop the signals sent to his mouth. His heart knew it was no solution to cause both of them more pain based on the claim it would save one of them from further pain; there was little logic to that and even his heart knew it. “You would think love is the most absolute thing in your life, the one thing you're sure of?” he paused to laugh, some rain slipped into his lungs and he had to suppress his coughs. “It's fickle and unreliable, and seldom is anyone ever sure ‘that's it, that's them.’”

He couldn’t bear the thought of finally finding the person he had been looking for his entire life just when there was so few grains of sand in his hourglass.

Changkyun still carried on his speech, he still insisted on pushing Kihyun away; his last cowardly request. “If I asked you to name three reasons why you love me, you-”

Kihyun cut him short, he sounded more collected. “You can be really stupid sometimes, you know that.” It was so absolute Changkyun felt his resolution shaking. “I love you because you looked deeper and loved me for what no one else but you could see.” He let that sink and again, Lim Changkyun was drowning as he drank in that voice, in those words, in that person –that angel of a person. He loved those broken wings; they still managed to caress his bruised soul. “I love you because you're the most humane person I’ve ever met, it was your words that sustained me at my darkest. I love because you’re you, Lim Changkyun.”

As Changkyun tried to get enshrouded in those words, he was trying to come back with anything that can make Kihyun un-love him.

Because in the end, no one walked away from ‘love’ unscathed either.

“And you think I love you?” he wouldn’t let his quivering lips prevail in his words. Raindrops tasted heavy on his lips.

Maybe, deep down, Changkyun was banking on love to save him. Maybe he was no different from everyone else –from Kihyun, always waiting for love to save them from this life. Maybe all it could take was hearing those affirmative words right now in this shit of a situation. But once again, pain was trespassing against his heart.

“Yes.” Kihyun sounded so sure. Changkyun felt so warm.

“And you can be sure of that?” he gave a snorting laugh as much as it pained him to, something to validate his acting.

 “Changkyun, what are you trying to do.”

_Push you away._

His lips trembled. “I just don’t think I'm the right person for you, I’m trying to make you see that. You don’t love _me_ , Kihyun. You and I are too damaged to know what love is.”

“After all we had, you don’t think I love you?” Kihyun sounded downright pissed. “You think I'm in love with the idea of you?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Changkyun realized he was still fighting for Kihyun even though he was the one pushing him away. He needed to pick a corner soon.

Kihyun was cursing. “Do you even believe any of the bullshit you tell your patients?”

Changkyun choked. “No.”

There was the moment of realization. He could picture Kihyun nodding, processing what he wished wasn’t true. Maybe there was a kernel of truth to his words. At least Changkyun now, the adrift Lim Changkyun, could interpret some truth in his very own words.

“Remember that day when you confessed-” Changkyun stopped short.

He remembered.

This was what his memory blocked out, this was the rest of the truth.

Changkyun’s shock soon dissolved to tears, tears embellished with a smile. That was why. That was why he chose to forget, to chase his sorrow away. He, a ticking bomb, colliding with another bomb.

How cruel was this life.

Lim Changkyun was a coward.

But what was he trying to achieve? Was he trying to play it safe, to live what remained of his life not knowing Kihyun was dying?

The only thing worse than death was watching someone you loved dying.

He could see himself, fraught with an overwhelming frenzy as he leafed through one of his medicine books. His heart was lamenting a loss before it happened, the loss of two people.

Memory, it was a fascinating thing. Easily manipulated, easily affected and always prone to damage.

And right now, Changkyun was grieving for the second time.

It was mostly tears that covered his face as he found a liberating chapter in the book he had been skimming through; however, a smile had found its way to his face. Yes, Yoo Kihyun had told him he was dying, but he could still choose to forget, this wasn’t stored away permanently in his memory.

And if it happened that he died, then he would have died trying. The coward in him would be leaving the one person he loved more than life behind to deal with his pain; again, alone and on his own. And it wasn’t like Changkyun would be ending his life earlier than dictated.

“Never mind, Kihyun.” He was laughing, he was losing what remained of his sanity. “I'm sorry, I love you.”

“Changkyun, don’t you even dare-” he could remember a similar scenario of a night when Kihyun gave him a similar call. He could remember getting the same feeling.

And yes, sometimes, two people could feel the same shade of emotion.

“You don’t have to worry, _I_ won't be doing anything.” He could tell he was going to faint any time soon. After all, Shownu, Jooheon and his father had been right.

He gave one last cough before his head grew too heavy; he thought he had heard something break in him that wasn’t just his heart. He could see red.

And it wasn’t fire.

Red was for love. Red was for blood.

He was lying on his back, facing the sky that greeted his smiling face with heavy raindrops. His smile was growing redder as he listened to Kihyun's voice.

The sky seemed to become black.

Before he slipped into oblivion, he thought his lips formulated something, some words that could do nothing to alleviate Kihyun's frantic cries.

_Forgive me._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now, that's /not/ a happy chapter  
> I'm not smirking, you are.


	13. Red and Black (apart)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> three things before this chapter  
> 1) “Is that what an angel sounds like?”  
> 2) personally apologizing to any med student or anyone who knows shit about medicine  
> 3) I love you guys

 

**Three,**

**Un Poème D'amour.**

 

 

He was in a hospital.

He found it hard to breathe; the air burned in his lungs. He could hardly feel his limbs; he felt disconnected. Lim Changkyun was in major pain, one that surpassed the physical one.

That was how the final chapters in his life were written, with blood rather than ink.

Everyone at some point was confronted with harsh truths they thought wouldn’t be up against so early. How sad it was to know you had dealt with the worst at such a young promising age. And it was even sadder to realize there were dimensions to the round word sadness; a world of unspoken melancholy everyone experienced but no one liked to talk about. Because however feelings you put into your words, it was an experience that must be lived, a firsthand experience. It was like the scar only a scarred person could detect on damaged skin, whose indentations only visible to an experienced eye; as for the others, only the feeling of something out of place would linger.

_With nothing to relate to, with nobody to hold your hand._

He could see Jooheon sleeping in the chair next to him. Groggily, he wondered how long his bestfriend had been sitting like that; how long he, Changkyun, had been unconscious.

He was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice Shownu who was talking to a nurse outside his room, dismissing her on meeting Changkyun's open eyes.

Shownu approached him, his face, contrary to the professionalism he always exhibited, was rather a compassionate mask.

“How are you feeling?” Shownu’s voice was taut.

Changkyun attempted at a smile. “I was hoping you’d tell me, hyung.”

Son Hyunwoo, Changkyun's neurologist, also his friend.

Shownu was shaking his head. Changkyun looked away, unable to summon even the tears.

Had he found it in him, Changkyun would have gave a derisive laugh at the ghost of his father. Doctors everywhere broke the rules, they would always take on personal cases.

“You don’t know what’s wrong with me?” Changkyun asked, not that he really cared at this point. Before he could answer, he was again coughing blood, painfully so as his body flung forward.

Even Jooheon was awoken at that agonizing sound.

Shownu was fixing his pillows, as though they were the reason Changkyun couldn’t find comfort.

“I put you up on steroids, you had an allergic reaction but you probably don’t remember. If your blood pressure doesn’t fluctuate, we’ll put you on beta blockers.” He paused, Changkyun knew the look on his face. “It’s not ideal, but it’s all we can do right now … at least till we figure it out.”

Changkyun smiled and Shownu pulled the chair nearer after exchanging a meaningful look with Jooheon. “Changkyun, listen, you have to tell me what exactly happened after the accident. The brain scans were clear, did you-”

“Retrograde amnesia.” Changkyun cut to the chase, avoiding both of his friends’ eyes. “Probably confabulation too. But, hey, I wouldn’t know if my memory is messing with me.” He was coughing again, the pain was growing more livid.

He was nodding. “Your fever hasn’t gone down, you're exhibiting signs of mycotic aneurysms. I’m afraid I…” he trailed off.

This time, Changkyun was laughing. “It’s ok, hyung, I've known this day would come.”

After Shownu had left, Jooheon tried to talk to Changkyun. He was tired. But he also wanted to spend some time with his bestfriend.

When the pain reached what Changkyun thought was its limit that night, the nurse upped the morphine and took away some of Changkyun's pain till he slipped into sleep.

 

The next day, his condition got worse.

Lim Changkyun’s days were noisily red.

Shownu said they were treating him for fungal infection, providing a lengthy explanation which Changkyun didn’t really care about. He was feeling no better. Period.

The third day, Shownu was taken off his case.

The night of the third day, his new doctor had offered a diagnosis.

He was suffering from his shortness of breath once again, barely keeping up with reality. Jooheon had just entered the room, looking like a mess. Changkyun felt guilty for keeping him by his side like this, his friend’s eye were more dark bags than eyes. He had told Jooheon to leave him, told him that it served no purpose. He didn’t need someone carrying his baggage of pain; Changkyun would rather not deal with more pain if possible.

“It’s in your lungs.” Jaebum, the doctor who took the case after Shownu, said. “The aneurysms were inflammatory and they’ve been multiplying.” In that pause, Changkyun let his eyes drift to Jooheon’s distressed ones and horrid expression. “It’s Hughes-Stovin.”

Lim Changkyun was no expert in neurology or pulmonology; however, he was expert on reading people and interpreting their expressions and tones. Right now, Dr. Im Jaebum was speaking in an apologetic tone, one used when one was bearing bad news.

He couldn’t smile. This was the requiem made by his ticking bomb.

“I'm sorry. It’s too advanced, eventually one of the aneurysms will rupture. There’s nothing we can do.”

Somehow, Changkyun didn’t care. What did his life amount to when he basically lost everything? He wanted to see Kihyun; he wanted to hear his voice, he wanted to hold him, to tell him how sorry he was.

What was he apologizing for anyway? Changkyun could apologize for the time they never had –the time they could never have, but he would never, in any dimension, apologize for the time they spent together; irrespective of the consequences. Those months were something he was taking to his grave.

That was why a tear was slipping against his cheek.

“Are you sure? I mean is there nothing-” Jooheon was so fretfully trying to bargain, as if Jaebum were the one responsible or as if life were a negotiable matter.

Jaebum was shaking his head, pressing Jooheon’s shoulder and apologizing.

Changkyun managed to find his voice before Jaebum was completely out of his room. “How many hours?”

Jaebum smiled a small sad smile. “Twenty, twenty-four tops.”

Changkyun nodded. Even through his shaky vision as he coughed, he could see Jooheon slumped into his seat, holding his head in his hands.

He let his friend have his time. Hell, Changkyun needed that time. Lim Changkyun needed time.

“This might not be the perfect timing,” Jooheon said, fishing something out of his pocket. “But I've been meaning to give you this the day Yeri, you know,” he was holding an envelope as he approached Changkyun's bed.

Changkyun could smell her perfume on the envelope; his insides churned and he felt sickened. He tried not to entertain that train of thought before it consumed him. He started reading the single line once Jooheon was seated back, trying not to cry.

 _‘I'm sorry, oppa, truly. Please don’t blame yourself.’_ It had read. Changkyun didn’t feel any better, he still felt responsible. Even if the note implied Yeri didn’t hate him. One way or another, he had managed to break her, regardless of whether or not she was the one who orchestrated this tragedy.

Changkyun looked up at the ceiling, fighting back tears.

Was it possible to beg pain to reach a certain level that it would blur the line between the emotional and the physical one?

He was about to ask his friend for one last favour when a figure appeared by the doorframe, saving him the trouble.

“Hey,” he said, not recognizing his own voice.

Kihyun didn’t reply, Changkyun guessed it was more of not being able to. They boy looked thunderstruck, terrified to his core.

A nurse appeared by Kihyun's side. “I'm sorry, sir, but no visitors allow-”

“It’s ok,” Changkyun coughed. As he tried to sit up in bed, Changkyun tried to breathe, holding his side. “He’s family.”

She must have seen something in Changkyun's eyes that she decided to let that one slide. She went back to the nursing station.

Again, it was Kihyun and Changkyun locking eyes. Changkyun was drowning.

“I'm sorry, hyung, but-”

Jooheon smiled. He walked till he reached Changkyun's bed and pressed his arm reassuringly. “I understand.” The look in Jooheon’s eyes seemed too cruel in its pain for Changkyun's heart. There stood a man, holding back tears as he looked at his dying friend with words being insufficient to deliver all he wanted to say.

As Jooheon crossed Kihyun by, he was saying something to Kihyun that made tears break loose in the latter’s eyes.

Kihyun stood silent for a whole minute next to Changkyun in bed. Changkyun was deafened by the severe intensity of the boy’s pain.

“I knew I should have made you promise never to abandon me.” Kihyun began, he was smiling and crying at the same time. A feat Changkyun found very endearing. So much he wanted to hold him. “I, a strict nonbeliever in how empty words and promises are, and you who wouldn’t go back on your word even if meant costing you your life.”

At that and despite the nagging pain, Changkyun only opened his arms, demanding a hug while scooting over. And Kihyun did curl up in bed next to him, in his arms.

 “But, Kihyun,” He started whispering into Kihyun's hair, “this time, it really costs me my life.”

Just like doctors break the rules, Changkyun was once again breaking a rule.

After all, promises were just like rules; not made to be broken, but to know your limit. Like how far you could go beyond breaking them without breaking a part of you.

“I'm sorry.” He managed to apologize.

“Shut up,” Kihyun was resting his head in the space between Changkyun’s neck and shoulder after lightly hitting his chest. “I love you.”

Changkyun smiled, playing with Kihyun's hair. He loved it so much. He loved him so much. “I've always loved you, even when I didn’t understand why.” Changkyun found himself on the verge of a chuckle, albeit tremulous. “Especially when I didn’t understand.”

Kihyun swanned his neck and kissed Changkyun lightly on the lips. Still, Changkyun managed to get lost in the kiss, even as the torrent of pain gripped him cold.

“I’ll be with you soon.” Kihyun whispered into his ear.

Changkyun smiled again.

_Just me and you._

That night, Changkyun was feeling less in pain as Kihyun, wretched and warm, lied in his arms, crying.

For all the love they couldn’t have. For all the endings they would have rather had.

 

It was post-midnight, Changkyun didn’t care about the exact hour. He had all he needed by his side. He could tell Kihyun was still awake; he knew that breathing pattern by heart.

His ragged breaths hurt, yet he fought to get the words out. “You and I, can you form three sentences starting with those two pronouns?”

When Kihyun looked up at him, he was smiling. He pecked Changkyun's cheek, closing his eyes. A second later, he was answering Changkyun's question. “You and I love each other,”

Changkyun closed his eyes, listening to Kihyun's blissful voice.

“You and I are leaving this world behind too soon.”

His smile was spreading.

“You and I don’t want this to be goodbye.” Kihyun's voice broke.

And so did Changkyun's heart.

 _Loved each other?_ Changkyun thought mournfully. _That’s the understatement of the year._

Kihyun fell back into Changkyun's embrace and the latter was hugging him with one arm while holding Kihyun's hand with his free hand.

He could feel the rapture. He coughed and his body flung forward, eyes went wide open; he was coughing too much blood. He could see Kihyun's horrid expression, he could see him jumping out of the bed and shouting out for help. Changkyun was smiling internally. Two nurses rushed in, followed by Jaebum. Kihyun was running a hand through his hair, his eyes were blinking with terror, a deer caught in the headlights. Jaebum was removing the pillows from behind his back, laying him down, shouting for orders. The machines were being too loud, his doctor was too loud, Kihyun's pain was too loud. Changkyun was coughing the life out of him, the pain was indescribable yet he felt like smiling. Kihyun was crying, his hands covering his mouth. He was the embodiment of a desolate angel witnessing human tragedy unfold.

No one was ever ready. Death wasn’t something you could ever be prepared for; even if you were awaiting it.

So many people around him trying to help him yet it was only him and Kihyun. He wanted to kiss his pain away. He wanted to love Yoo Kihyun.

Lim Changkyun; a broken doorway and a bruised soul.

He had found a purpose. He was happy.

 

\---

 

Kihyun was numb as he left the hospital.

He thought numb was too strong a feeling for what he was feeling for numb was an emotion after all. Kihyun? He was empty. And emptiness was cold; it was heavy.

You were not living your own life if you lived by someone else’s terms. Even if that someone was a person you created in your twisted mind to turn your life into a living ethereal hell. Even if you chose to live like someone else _._

Putting up your defenses after holding a funeral to your past self in spite of a trauma you so unfortunately had to undergo. Being mentally bullied while being your own abuser. Pushing away people despite longing for their company, just because you selfishly chose not to end up getting hurt.

This was multiple times worse than the first time, worse than Hyuk.

This was a tattered self getting shredded again. There was no ‘had it worse’ in pain, getting hurt for the same reason for the second time didn’t negate the pain; it amplified it. It still hurt.

This was his life, or what remained of it where he was having two dreams going on parallel lines, never meeting and never ending, yet one and the same.

This was the acclaimed self-struggle going in you which was susceptible to shape into a self-loathing sort of feeling. A dilemma of whether you should move on or move back down, leading you to be so paralyzingly stuck in-between.

Going against your will despite the screams of your mind and the entreaties of your heart.

_I was supposed to by my life’s protagonist, so why do I feel like I’m the antagonist?_

It was snowing.

At least he knew where he was heading this time.

Lim Changkyun didn’t save him. Changkyun just gave him a reason not to give up on life. And that was enough.

 _You idiot, you can’t go yet._ Kihyun looked up at the sky. _You've yet to show me the miracle._

He so much wanted to scream that, but deep down, he questioned the truth in his statement. Miracle was synonymous with Changkyun.

He was in the studio, standing before his piano.

This was his third trial. He tried to keep holding on for a week, only losing control thrice. It didn’t feel different, for the third time, this was nothing but a reenactment, the lingering sense of a déjà vu.

Once again, randomly, he took two pills from his bottle.

Kihyun could clearly see Minhyuk leaning on the piano; he was in no mood to pamper him. So he sat at the piano, stroking a key that sounded like a far-away cry. He heard a sob coming out of his lips as he flinched; as he heard something being ripped inside.

He started playing the piece he could never finish, the piece he had played for Changkyun days ago.

_You promised you were going to be there forever, where’s that forever now?_

 He was playing in tears –in ruins. There was no room for anything but broken hearts and broken promises now.

Something kept breaking within him with every key being hit, some absence of any fulfillment that nothing could seal.

Lim Changkyun was no longer with him.

His chest hurt, his face slumped against the keys. He could hear the off-tune sounds his face made with the keys at the impact. He could see Minhyuk toying with his medicinal bottle.

“At least you don’t have to live your fear,” Minhyuk was taunting. He could see C jumping on the piano, her paws gently touching his cheek as he couldn’t move. He was clenching to his shirt, C was meowing sadly. Minhyuk was smiling. “You're still dying alone.”

But it didn’t matter. Lee Minhyuk wasn’t real and Kihyun knew it. Still, he chose to enable the illusion.

He could remember the first time he saw Changkyun. He had tried to end his life but he heard Changkyun's voice. He could still remember how it felt. He was numb; Changkyun had told him, clear and spell-binding, _“Please, don’t jump.”_

Lim Changkyun, the person whose stare stripped him naked. The person Kihyun was so adamant not to fall a captive to his gaze, so he became a prisoner in his heart. Sometimes you just avoided eye contact because you knew once they got a deeper look, they would be able to tell something was wrong. Yoo Kihyun knew Changkyun was not like that; he never once failed to tell precisely what was wrong.

The pain in his chest was now blinding; his fingers could rip through the fabric of his shirt.

The same memory that kept him cold was now turning him warm.

He was dancing on the ledge, trying to find a single reason to hold on. But he fainted before he found a reason, still he was adamant on finishing what he started once he opened his eyes again.

But he couldn’t. Not anymore.

Because he had been lying to himself, Lim Changkyun's voice was his reason.

Even in his dream that day, he was still dancing maniacally on the ledge.

And before he had opened his eyes to face reality, he hadn’t heard the sweet nonchalance; he had heard enough concern in his companion’s voice that reached out to him deep in his slumber and blew some warmth onto his cold face like the morning kisses he never got to taste. He had to wonder if that was what an angel sounded like. It was a sound that overpowered everything around it; nonetheless, it was the most dulcet tone Kihyun's ears ever registered. And he tried to gravitate. He tried to yet focus more on soaring, on never letting his feet know what the taste of fresh ground was; all he knew was the infinite skyline and the freedom so vast it hurt. But it was a stronger force; care always was. A more flexible force; one that wasn’t chained, that knew no giving up; so unrestrained that it sounded like it could call out to you forever. It was only tethered to its caller’s will, which, ironically, made it all the more unshackled. And Kihyun knew for sure it could expand and extend and reach out as farther as he backed away.

_And it pulled me out._

He tried to breathe. It was getting harder with the pain waves and he kept clutching to his shirt.

He was slipping further away.

_It talked me down._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooooo, this is it?  
> it kinda saddens me it's over, wn was literally the longest story I wrote, time-wise (bc on and off) and I got attached to it especially with all the emotional feedback -thank you guys for that, you're awesome :')  
> before you lash at me, this ending was foreshadowed throughout the story lol it's in the first chapter, first thing too... I know, I'm a bit of a sadist but for more reasons than I can count, this had to end like this else-  
> nvm that, once again, thank you, I've truly enjoyed this, love ya <3

**Author's Note:**

> //sigh  
> the changki tag is so small look at what I had to do  
> lol jk, this ship (and band) wrecked my life tbh, sorry for the starter chapter I promise it gets better -or worse who knows- I'll be updating soon, hope you like it xx


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